An Iranian journalist, in his report on the recent massacre in Tehran, writes:

Not knowing which voice to believe is a horrifying and sorrowful truth; but knowing the truth and yet being unable to speak it is even more horrifying.⁽¹⁾

There are elements of truth in this statement and it is one with which millions of Iranians and non-Iranians alike can deeply relate. Yet the question of which voice should be believed itself points to a deeper reality: these voices are nothing more than competing narratives of factions of capital that dominate mainstream media and generate widespread intellectual confusion.

As Marx made clear:

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The Communist Manifesto

At first glance, such uncertainty is attributed to the absence of “democracy” in the Islamic Republic. But this explanation collapses upon closer inspection.

First, because it is a great lie meant to cover up and invert the real causes of the emergence of such catastrophes — causes we attempted to explain in our previous text.⁽²⁾

Secondly, those very same actors openly justify committing such crimes and the massacre of thousands by declaring the suppression of a “coup”,⁽³⁾ or else claim to have “transparently clarified” matters — albeit in a clownish manner — by publishing, on the president’s orders, a list of the deceased!⁽⁴⁾

And thirdly, there is the inability to overcome this long-standing habit that insists one must always choose and believe one of the narratives of the reactionary factions present on the scene, through shallow comparisons with one another and based on the choice between the “bad” and the “worse”; or "lesser of two evils" and in doing so, spilled blood is retrospectively cleansed and justified with rituals of mourning, all in service of installing one faction in power.⁽⁵⁾

Otherwise, the catastrophes of the streets of Minneapolis, the failure of “help on the way” to arrive,⁽⁶⁾ and thanking Iran’s leaders for not hanging protesters,⁽⁷⁾ clearly reveal the full mirror-image of the supposed essential difference between “democracy” and “tyranny”.

A capitalist order that has been unable to deal with an economic crisis for a half century has been left with nothing but expedients to cope with that crisis. And now it exhibits its further decline by dispensing with its educated representatives; political decorum has been abandoned altogether. A new strongman, a vulgar thug elevated to the office of President of the US, now sets the tone. In broad daylight, he abducts the president of another country and parades him through the streets of New York, while the other leaders of the so-called free world prove incapable of expressing even verbal opposition. He does not hesitate to receive as Syrian president someone who, until yesterday, was carrying out ISIS-style beheading and today dons an Armani suit and a straightened tie. All the political niceties once preached by this order have been unceremoniously discarded.

Only when the reach of coercion turns inward, against their own ranks, do the democratic reformists cry out in protest. As they themselves admit:

President Trump is acting like an international gangster … he is a bully, he thinks he can grab whatever he wants using force if necessary … the most corrupt president the US has ever seen … ⁽⁸⁾

The Truth of History Lies in Class Antagonism

The claim that the truth of history can only be understood as the history of class conflict is not merely an abstract, far-sighted philosophical statement that one should only pay lip service to or admire. What is happening today in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Minneapolis, and elsewhere is nothing but a reflection of this very insight — one that is deliberately or inadvertently portrayed in a different way.

The causes of brutal killings in the streets of Tehran are explained merely as either the result of an attempted Western coup or the brutality of the Islamic Republic; the cause of the massacre in Gaza is reduced solely to the criminality of Israel or Hamas; the bombing of Ukrainian cities is attributed to Putin’s dictatorship or a consequence of NATO expansionism; and the shooting of protesters in the streets of Minneapolis, in broad daylight and in front of mobile phone cameras held by the protesters themselves, is described as a failure to follow the law or deserved treatment for "domestic terrorists". But these are not mistakes, technical errors, or innocent differences of perspective.

This is because these laws, in their very essence, legally sanction such killing and bloodshed under the protection of the “sacred” existence of capital. Wherever any protest, any movement, or any struggle takes on a character of confrontation with the rule of capital, it is first met with deafening propaganda from the guardians and supporters of capital, who fuel intellectual confusion by presenting shallow and false narratives. If the movement continues, it then faces the iron fist of both “authoritarian” and “democratic” regimes alike.

In Iran, the organisation of workers is declared unnecessary and illegal by invoking Islamic laws, and when strikes occur, they are ruthlessly suppressed under the pretext of national security. In the United States, under the pretext of the illegality of migrant workers, civil liberties are restricted and protesters are shot or jailed.

No War but the Class War

The barbarism that today parades before the disbelieving eyes of everyone is nothing more than proof of the truth that all reformist paths have reached a dead end, and that the scramble for “shortcuts” — shortcuts that have long proven to take far longer than travelling on any main road — was exhausted long ago. There is no way out for the working class other than fuelling and intensifying the class struggle; all other options are nothing but deception.

The present situation, which is portrayed differently by the dominant narratives, must be constantly and insistently challenged by revolutionaries. The manner in which the class struggle is to be intensified must be depicted and articulated more clearly and more concretely than ever before, based on what is really going on.

To intensify the class struggle means to recognise that:

• Workers cannot wait for saviours from outside to enter the scene, they do not sit idle awaiting intervention from above. Their only weapons are their own organisation and their own consciousness.
• Assemblies, committees or councils open to all workers represent a way to unify the struggle and reject bourgeois parliamentarism in practice.
• Wherever they are in the world, workers can only rely on the support of other workers elsewhere in the world. The internationalist perspective, which can be summarised as “no war but the class war”, is more than just a slogan.

Throughout the history of the capitalist system, the class struggle has never stopped, even in times of so-called social peace. War, repression, and massacre may have halted their fight for a time but the contradictions of the system have never gone away. Neither employer bribery, nor nationalist nonsense, nor war-mongering has ever provided a solution.

What workers have experienced and learned is this truth: workers are liberated only by their own organisation and their own consciousness — nothing more, nothing less.

The Organisation of the Workers Themselves

Under the present conditions, with the shadow of war hanging over the entire world, the working class must now prepare itself for every possible scenario. Once again, history has imposed a stark choice upon it: war or revolution. The organisation of the workers themselves manifests itself in two ways.

On the one hand, we see the resistance to the economic attacks of capital giving rise to organs of working class self-organisation, such as assemblies, committees or councils. Workers in Iran have relatively recent experience of this with their shoras. The slogan “Bread, Jobs, Freedom – Soviet Power!”, already being advanced in some of the current struggles, directly hints at this experience.

On the other hand, the politically advanced elements of the working class, who are currently present in a scattered form across different parts of the world, need to come together on the basis of a common platform, in order to provide a political lead in current struggles and combat all the bourgeois narratives. It is something we, in the Internationalist Communist Tendency, consider to be both possible and necessary.

Notes:

(1) radiofarda.com

(2) leftcom.org

(3) bbc.com

(4) president.ir

(5) leftcom.org

(6) reuters.com

(7) france24.com

(8) youtube.com

The January Uprising, the Massacre of the People and Lessons to be Learned

How can all these new dreams,
unopened seedlings, flowers
that have not yet bloomed, wither in the spring
and become dust in my soul?

Siavash Kasrai

This January, massive protests erupted from a suffering people fed up with oppression and exploitation. These protests quickly grew into a widespread and all-encompassing uprising. In a short space of time, more than 190 cities, both large and small, as well as many rural areas, rose up and chanted furiously against the political regime and the country's officials. The people took to the streets, turning the city's squares and public thoroughfares into an arena for their protest, and in one voice condemned the ruling policies and the Islamic Republic, demanding a fundamental change in the country's political and economic situation.

The Islamic Republic is an exploitative government and a supporter of exploiters. It is a government that intensifies the poverty and misery of the vast majority of the people: the main cause of runaway inflation, and the operator of a repressive and murderous apparatus that has bloodied the streets, killing at least thousands of people in January alone, while repressions and arrests continue. Such a government is neither willing nor able to provide even the minimum conditions of life for workers and other toilers in towns and villages. The protesters were demanding their natural rights and a change to their fate: a fate that for the past 47 years has been nothing but poverty, inequality, discrimination, oppression, repression and death. The people perfectly understand that the main promoter and perpetrator of all these crimes, of looting and exploitation, is a regime that sacrifices everything for its own survival. The people have the right to demand the removal of a government that has turned prosperity, comfort and freedom into an unattainable dream. The regime's response to these protests, which stemmed from the will of the people, was massacre, murder, bloodshed and gunfire. The suffering people witnessed with their own eyes a great massacre and atrocity. They saw the blood of thousands of loved ones spill onto the cobblestones, and the families who were left to mourn the loss of the children who were the apples of their eyes. We now see thousands arrested and thrown into prison, awaiting torture and death.

We, independent organisations, condemn this barbaric massacre and this blatant, unbounded crime. We consider it our obligation to share in the grief of the bereaved and the loved ones of the departed. We demand unlimited medical treatment for the wounded and those affected by the incident, and the unconditional release of all political prisoners, protesters, and detainees. We saw, and all informed and aware people of the world witnessed and became ever more aware, that a great crime had been committed here by the Islamic Republic. Human lives became collateral for the survival of a corrupt ruling class that, relying on political power and the capitalist system, prefers its own welfare, comfort and privileged class status at the cost of massacre and immolation of society and human life.

The reality is that the immortal power of the masses, particularly the power of the workers who form the backbone of society, will prevail over the power which the regime has repeatedly and brutally wielded for nearly five decades by means of repression and mass slaughter, including of protesters and dissidents. Once the masses organise consciously and with a clear vision, the regime’s power will be hollow, and the ground will undoubtedly shake beneath the feet of the current rulers. The rift between the government and the people has now widened and deepened. This fissure cannot be mended by repression, reform, secret and fraudulent deals and diplomacy; nor by sheikhs, shahs, or rotten, old-fashioned strongmen; nor by looking to the great powers – who are themselves responsible for mass murder and the setting of large parts of the world ablaze. The chasm is too deep, and no miracle will cure the regime's crises. The knot of problems for the people, workers, and toilers will be untied by their own hands. The mainstay for changing the fate of the working people and for fundamental transformation in society is the collective power of the oppressed and the deprived: those whose labour, thought, and effort are the very foundation of the constructive and creative force of society and the world.

However, fundamental social change, the primary condition of which is the overthrow of corrupt and oppressive powers, will not be achieved easily, nor without the tools of struggle, organisation, and the requisite militant knowledge. A patient effort, tactics and methods appropriate to the specific conditions, the balance of power and the ability to rely on the vast tide of the working and toiling masses are required. Powerful and widespread levers are necessary to link the disjointed masses and to bring to a halt the wheel that revolves on the axis of oppression and exploitation.

These levers are nothing but the product of the independent and revolutionary organisations of the workers and their toil! The toiling masses, and above all the workers, must support and unite with one another; one person's sorrow must be everyone's sorrow, one person's struggle everyone's struggle, and one person's welfare and comfort must be everyone's welfare and comfort. This is the lesson of history and the experience of all victorious movements. We too must learn it and apply it in our lives and our struggle.

Let us unite, organise, and change our destiny.

A Wage Increase Depends on a Comprehensive Struggle Against the Capitalist State

The protests of January 2026 were a cry of anger and a reaction to the regime's economic and social policies and its political performance, which have imposed harsh and dire conditions on the oppressed masses. These protests were met with bullets, massacre, and imprisonment by the government's repressive forces and torturers. The alleys and streets of various cities across the country were turned into slaughterhouses for the suffering and exploited people, and thousands of people, particularly from 8 January onwards, were murdered. Alongside this widespread massacre, thousands more were injured or arrested and imprisoned.

At the same time as this popular uprising, the United States and Israel, with Reza Pahlavi and their puppet monarchists at their disposal, opportunistically saw the conditions as favourable for riding the wave of the popular uprising and taking revenge on the Islamic Republic. With the deceptive bombast and charlatanism of Trump and Reza Pahlavi, they secured a suitable environment for their predatory and imperialist ambitions.

Such a bloody situation, coupled with poverty and destitution, insecurity and lack of comfort, the absence of welfare and public services, widespread unemployment and, in short, the absence of “bread and freedom”, has driven the lives of workers, toilers and the majority of wage earners to the brink of ruin and destruction, imposing harsh and gruelling conditions upon society.

It is precisely under these circumstances that the owners of capital and power – the very same ones who persecute the people for their just demands and their call for “bread and freedom” in the streets – are lying in wait for an opportunity to use this murky security climate to hold meetings behind closed doors with their own hand-picked agents and institutions, and impose their ill-fated decisions about the minimum wage upon millions of workers.

Undoubtedly, the government, employers and capitalists, as in previous years, will never make a just decision regarding workers' wages in the meetings of the Supreme Labour Council. This is because the lower the wages, the greater the profits for the capitalists, and the more widespread poverty becomes in the lives of workers. The size of the workers' dinner table is inversely related to the greed of the capitalists. Wages below the poverty line are increasingly imposing absolute destitution, destitution, and misery upon the lives of workers.

Let us resist these exploitative profiteers and sworn defenders of capital from now on, and link the January protests with the struggle for wage increases, the right to organise, shorter working hours, and opposition to contracting and staffing companies, the job grading scheme, and arduous work. We must sustain this struggle and raise our demands. Awareness of our working and living conditions, our unity and organisation will guarantee the improvement of the working class's standard of living and the provision of social welfare, and will be the most important action for a positive and fruitful transformation of the current situation. We must fight as one for our demands and wrest our rights from the jaws of the exploiters who pocket astronomical fortunes by exploiting the toil of the working class.

The monthly wage that these plunderers determine for us, without any consultation with the genuine, elected representatives of the workers, does not even cover a week's living expenses for workers and toilers, given the runaway inflation and exorbitant cost of essential goods. Our wage must be based on the real cost of living and be equivalent to the average expenses of an urban family of four. Such a wage must be able to provide for the social welfare of workers and toilers, encompassing everything from adequate food, clothing, and housing, to full access to education, healthcare, treatment, welfare services, and so on. In the current circumstances, given the structural and runaway inflation and the resulting fall in purchasing power, a real increase in wages is an immediate and vital necessity.

If it was previously stated that the minimum wage should not be less than 60 million tomans, in the current circumstances, with rampant inflation, a continuous fall in purchasing power and the daily rising cost of essential goods for the people, this amount is no longer sufficient to cover the bare necessities of an ordinary, decent life. Today, this figure must be more than 60 million tomans. (Based on statistical data and, by the admission of government officials and bodies, the minimum wage should be around 70 million tomans.)

We will not submit to the humiliating and sub-poverty wages that the owners of capital and power seek to impose on us through their representatives in the so-called “tripartite”—the government, employers, and token workers' representatives.

We, the workers who produce the wealth and welfare of society, fight in the hope of a future free from servitude, bondage, and tyranny, and with the aspiration for a worthy life, full of prosperity and freedom. Relying on our collective strength, we will move forward united to make this a reality.

We also condemn the repression, arrests, and killing of protesters, and demand the unconditional release of all political prisoners and those detained during the nationwide protests.

The only way to defend the rights of workers is through independent organisation, class solidarity, and nationwide organisation.

Let us unite, organise, and change our destiny.