The swan song of Khomeinism
HE IMPRESSIVE breadth of the mourning for Khomeini's death, nonetheless, evoked surprise. It was a resounding refutation of the claims by many Iranian oppositionists of both right and left that the "Islamic" regime had lost any mass base and was maintaining itself only by terror. This self-delusion was shared worldwide by many who — for good or bad reasons — were looking forward to the end of Khomeinism.
The outburst of feeling in Tehran was a bitter disappointment for all of them. Of course, the scenes of collective hysteria prompted by the Imam's funeral, indicate clearly that the event was in large measure a phenomenon of mass psychology. But without falling into the primitive form of idealism represented by the psychological theory of history, you cannot attribute the grief expressed by a large part of the Iranian population simply to a fanaticism fostered by ignorance and backwardness.
Psychological, ideological and religious factors are quite real forces in determining history. However, they do not operate on masses that can be manipulated according to anyone's will, who are susceptible to any kind of "brain-washing." In order to fanaticize masses of people, you have to convince them that you represent a reliable road toward improving their fate and greater dignity for them. In order to fanaticize them in a lasting way, you have to be able to offer them tangible progress along that road.
Victims of the Khomeini regime's terror
The most disturbing thing about the mass outbursts of June 4, 5 and 6 in Tehran is that they happened ten years after the extraordinary mobilization that greeted Khomeini on his return from exile on February 1, 1979. Ten years in which the Iranian population has been able to get an idea of what the "Islamic regime" represented in reality. Ten years in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians paid with their lives for the demented pigheadedness of the octogenarian of Qom (the holy city where he lived) in the war against Iraq, while almost two million people chose exile, and tens of thousands fell victim to the Khomeini regime's terror. And yet, ten years later, millions of Iranians were still ready to weep for the Imam.
The key to this paradox can be provided by a correct analysis of the process set in motion in Iran in 1979. In this respect, moreover, the ayatollah's funeral was highly revealing. It contradicted the interpretation that Khomeini was a usurper of the February 1979 revolution, the leader
MILLIONS of Iranians, forming a vast human sea, took part in the funeral of
Ayatollah Khomeini, the
"guide of the Islamic revolution," who died on June 3. Adored by millions and loathed by millions, the
"inspired" leader of the mullahs' regime has gone down in history as one of those personalities who have aroused violently conflicting passions during their lives.
### SALAH JABER of a Thermidorian reaction, or even a counter-revolution. According to this interpretation, the establishment of the "Islamic" dictatorship was a break, a turning back of the process initiated in 1979, to such a point that the situation under Khomeini became worse than under the shah for the Iranian population as a whole.
This view has been clearly refuted by the undeniable fact that the millions who poured out in Teheran this month are the same as those who formed the majority of the mass mobilizations ten years earlier,
IRAN especially in the capital. But it also confirms the interpretation that stressed the continuity of the Iranian process, the predictability of its course from the outset, the uninterrupted retrogression of a revolution that began with nationaldemocratic demands, but was from the start led by a profoundly reactionary network of mullahs and fundamentalist activists — a sort of permanent revolution in reverse.2 Brutal and distorted capitalist development
From this standpoint, there were of course a series of breaks in the Iranian process, as its leadership broke with one or another category that had converged with it in its twofold opposition to the shah and his American tutors. Nonetheless, the establishment of the "Islamic" dictatorship in no way constituted a break of the process itself, but was rather its natural outcome.
The shah's regime was hated as few regimes have ever been. It made its megalomaniac shows of conspicuous consumption before the eyes of pauperized masses whose numbers were constantly swelling as a result of the brutal and distorted capitalist development given impetus by the regime since the start of the 1960s. These masses, in particular the bottom layers of Teheran society, who come from the peasantry or the traditional petty-bourgeoisie (traders and artisans) in both the countryside and the towns, formed a gigantic, highly explosive, reservoir of forces ready to go into action against the regime.
The historic failure of modernist bourgeois Iranian nationalism, represented by Mossadegh and his fall in 1953, the dis crediting of Stalinism represented by the Tudeh party in the wake of Mossadegh's fall, as well as the inadequacy of a revolutionary left following guerrilla-type models, left the field open for another candidate to overthrow the shah - the fundamentalist faction of the Shiite clergy headed up by Khomeini.
Through its social-welfare activity, helping the poor in the name of Islamic charity, the substantial network of the Iranian clergy — with 120,000 members in 1979 or 1/300 of the country's population! — indoctrinated the pauperized masses. It offered them the ideological refuge of a religion that, in its Shi'ite version in par1. Despite the sexist etymology of the word "hysteria" (which comes from hystera, "uterus,"), the most hysterical crowds were men. 2. See "The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism"
3, Suminer 1 ternational 15
(1981), first published in Marxist Review, Vol.2, No.3, Summer 1987. June 26, 1989 • #166 International Viewpoint
IRAN ticular, exalts the oppressed, the mustazafeen, holding out the perspective of ideal social justice in the framework of an Islamic utopia.
Based on the idea of a return to a mythical early Islam, this utopia is essentially reactionary. Theocracy, patriarchy and obscurantism are the three pillars common to all varieties of Islamic fundamentalism. It can, however, serve to mobilize masses of people suffering the horrors of dependent capitalism and feeling nostalgia for the past. The more illiterate the masses are and the lower their level of politicization because of denial of freedom, the more vulnerable they are to this "opium of the people," which has the peculiar property of being capable of becoming a stimulant.
War against Iraq a safety-valve for the regime
The mustazafeen, organized by the mullahs and the lay missionaries of Islamic fundamentalism and led by the "supreme guide," Ayatollah Khomeini, thus formed the spearhead of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Flocking in their hundreds of thousands into the various apparatuses and institutions of the new regime, they had the illusion, after toppling the throne of a seemingly all-powerful ruler, that they had overnight become a new ruling class. This fabulous psychological lift was reinforced at the time of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979-80 by a feeling that the United States, the superpower that had dominated Iran and protected the shah, had been successfully
This twofold exaltation was reinforced again after September 1980 by Iranian patriotism, or even Persian chauvinism, in the war against the Iraqi invasion. For seven years, this war became the main theme for the mullahs' ideological mobilization of the population. Over this period, Iran stopped the invaders, pushed them back to the border in 1982, and then began a slow but real advance into Iragi territory, with the declared aim of reaching Baghdad and overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime.
After 1982, the war against Iraq became a safety-valve for the Khomeini regime. Without this, it would have been forced to confront grave socio-economic problems and the exacerbation of its internal dissent. The military mobilization and the slaughter caused by the war enabled it partially to absorb potentially enormous unemployment. The peremptory demands of the military effort justified the setbacks of the economy, and simplified choices. National unity against the enemy called for putting a damper on the differences in the regime, under Khomeini's tutelage.
At the same time, the "Islamic" regime continued to minister to the needs of its 16 of goods, Food and othersors osubsidies clientele — public housing, distribution International Viewpoint #166 • June 26, 1989 were provided by institutions such as the Holy War for Reconstruction and the Martyrs' Foundation for the families of war victims. Thus, material interests combined with political and ideological mobilization and emotional excitement to offer the regime a rather comfortable popular base.
What enabled the regime of the Iranian mullahs to finance both its war and welfare for its social clientele was not manna from heaven but from beneath the earth: oil. Waging a war of a very low capital intensity, resorting to a large extent to "human waves," Iran managed to avoid going into debt. The oil revenues were sufficient, just barely to be sure, to keep the regime afloat. Without the oil factor the ten years of the Khomeini regime have been impossible - the demands of capitalist economic rationality would have clashed with the economi-
"irresponsible" character of the Khomeini regime's social and political management. By financing the budget, oil gave the regime a wide margin of maneuver and autonomy.
Nonetheless, Iran is not a rich country, if you compare the oil revenues with the size of the population. So, oil has only cushioned the inexorable slide in the country's economic and social tions, dragged down by the combined weight of the war and waste. Unemployment and poverty swelled, against a backdrop of rampant inflation, far exceeding the regime's potential for social assistance. These difficulties were compounded after 1987 by the bogging down of the Iranian forces in Iraq after four years of slow advance at a high cost in human life. The wind began to shift in Iran itself, where signs of growing disaffection with the regime by the population as a whole
In 1988, Iraq regained the upper hand in the war. It managed, in its turn, not only to push the Iranian troops out of its territory but also to begin to nibble again at Iran's territory. Khomeini was forced to abandon his dream, and in July to accept the cease-fire proclaimed by Security Council a year before. In his own words, this decision was "more painful than swallowing poison." It was the beginning of his political death agony.? He tried again to find a safety valve for the passions of his social base in the person of Salman Rushdie. But this time the target was too small and too far away to serve as a real incentive for mobilization. A million people slaughtered in senseless war
On June 3, Khomeini died at the age of 89 in his hospital bed, after sending a million teenagers and men in the prime of life to be slaughtered in a senseless war. In a final outburst, his social base mobilized for his funeral. But there should be no mistake. This last mobilization of farewell - which was equal to, if not greater than, the one for his return in 1979 — was the swan song of Khomeinism. The best evidence of this, paradoxically, is the very intensity of the grief and distress shown by the black-clad masses. Distress at the collapse of a fantasy world that is disappearing with the death of its inspirer. Distress of a population that has been left abandoned, facing a difficult present and a highly uncertain future. Distress at the great void left by Khomeini, which none of his epigones is able to fill.
The battle to determine the Imam's successor has already begun. With no-one to fill the role of arbiter that he played, it promises to be a stormy one. At this stage, the four main actors in this drama are the incumbent president of the republic (whose term expires in October), Hojatoleslam Ali Khamenei, who was appointed on June 4 to succeed the Imam as "supreme guide" and promoted at the same time to the rank of ayatollah; Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the present speaker of the parliament, who has just announced his candidacy for the presidency of the republic in the elections scheduled for August; Ahmed Khomeini, the Imam's son, whose role up until now depended entirely on the fact that he controlled access to his father and seemed to exercise a growing influence on his decisions; and, finally, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, who was named in 1985 as the Imam's successor and then ousted on March 27 this year.
Theological, clerical and political differences
In addition to these four figures, there is a gaggle of ayatollahs and mullahs who can claim power or who hold a piece of it, generally in the context of special allianc es with one of the men cited above. The struggle for power in Iran revolves around theological and clerical differences as well as political ones. It takes on the aspect of competing personal ambitions, but nonetheless reflects differing sociopolitical projects.
In fact, while the Shi'ite clergy is defithe backbone of the "Islamic" regime, it is not a homogeneous social layer. The Shi'ite clergy is an estate divided into ascending ranks and directly woven into the social fabric, on which it depends. It cannot be equated to a Bonapartist bureaucracy, whose special feature 1s precisely that it is detached from "civil society." Like the French clergy durnig the Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, for example, the Iranian clergy reflects the divisions in society. Within it you have to distinguish between the lower 3. On the 1987-88 period, see "Is the Gulf War over?" IV 148, October 3, 1988. 4. See the description of the clergy given in the excellent condensed book by Chapour Haguiguat, Iran, la révolution islamique, Editions Complexe, Brussels, 1985.
and upper clergy, and in each category between various social attitudes and affiliations. 4
The great majority of the clergy were welded together around Khomeini. All of them have profited from the "Islamic revolution," which put them in power. But once it came to exercising this power, the options were as manifold and divergent as the social and economic determining factors. A faction of the clergy, notably at the top, is linked to the traditional wealthy classes in the towns (the rich bazaar merchants) and in the countryside (the big landowners). But he greater part of the clergy, especially the lower strata, belongs socially and politically to a gamut of urban and rural petty-bourgeois layers ranging from the poorest to the most well off. Its political behavior corresponds to that of these layers, including their characteristic oscillation.
This is the source of the great confusion and heterogeneity, against a background of instability, that typifies the regime of the Iranian mullahs. The dominant fundamentalist ideology is too vague and imprecise with respect to the problems of modern society to be a source of cohesion and consensus. It is in fact moulded to suit the real social aspirations of the protagonists. This goes from a populist fundamentalism with radical anti-plutocratic tones to an ultra-conservative fundamentalism favoring unbridled free enterprise.
All of these positions are backed up with verses from the Koran and quotations from the Prophet and his cousin and son-in-law Ali (whom the Shi'ites, unlike the Sunnis, take as their example). Ayatollah Montazeri is the main figure in the populist fundamentalist current. In that sense, he is the most faithful to the Khomeinist tradition of 1979-80. Up until 1987, he enjoyed the confidence of the Imam, who designated him his successor. This was a natural choice, in particular since Montazeri alone among the politically active Khomeinist clerics had the theological qualifications necessary for the job according to the 1979 constitution.
Some people close to Montazeri provoked a break with Khomeini in 1986 by exposing Rafsanjani's secret dealings with Washington and setting off the Irangate scandal. The severe repression against those close to Montazeri in 1987 signaled the beginning of a series of blows against himself and his partisans. Clearly, the Imam was unhappy because, addled by his desire to finish off Saddam Hussein, he had secretly given his green light to Rafsanjani.
Ahmed, the Imam's son, who had previously been an ally of Montazeri, went over to the side of Rafsanjani. The latter, a notable opportunist, a great demagogue and a fabulously wealthy landowner, is the main representative of the supporters of stabilizing Iran on a course of capitalist development open to foreign participation, especially to the imperialist coun tries. Since 1987, he has constantly gained ground in his advance toward taking the central power. Appointed head of the regime's armed forces by the Imam in June 1988, he convinced Khomeini to accept the cease-fire in July. With Ahmed Khomeini's complicity, he managed to get the Imam to kick out Montazeri in
March and then to set up a commission to reform the constitution in two respects.
One was to limit the "religious guide's" temporal powers, this being a title to which Rafsanjani cannot pretend and which he does not covet. The second was, following the American model, to increase considerably the powers of the presidency of the republic, for which he intended to run.
The appointment after Khomeini's death of Ali Khamenei as the "supreme guide" was made possible by the alliance between Khomeini junior and Rafsanjani. Khamenei, a colorless figure and a weak
IRAN character, entirely suits the redefinition of the role of "guide" that the present speaker of the parliament wants. Of course, the new ayatollah may hold some surprises in store. But for the moment he is nothing more than the shadow of Rafsanjani, who has already launched the final phase of his conquest of power.
Montazeri himself, who is fully qualified to challenge the in fact unconstitutional appointment of Khamenei and claim the post for himself, also went into action after the Imam's death. He may choose to announce his candidacy for the presidency of the republic in opposition to his adversary, Rafsanjani. In this looming battle, Montazeri has the support of a major part of the regime's active base, including the Pasdaran or "Revolutionary Guards". Since being put in a minority in the regime, he has allied himself with the liberals grouped around Bazargan and become a champion of restoring democratic rights and liberties, thereby gaining further popularity. Rafsanjani, for his part, is counting on the aspiration for stability and an opening up to the outside world that he embodies. He is relying on the support of the technocratic and administrative apparatus, and course the support of the possessing classes. Finally, and perhaps above all, he is relying on the military hierarchy, to which his appointment as interim chief of the armed forces in June 1988 has enabled him to develop ties.
However, the deceased ayatollah has left the parliamentary president a time bomb. His will sets out a foreign policy line directly opposite to Rafsanjani's, and calls for choosing a man of modest origin as leader of the country. The existence of several power centers has characterized Iran since 1979. Can a centralized and stable bourgeois regime around Rafsanjani come out of this? That is not very likely. Will the contention of the factions blow up the regime? Will it degenerate into civil war? Several scenarios are possible: notably, if there is a descent into chaos, intervention by the regular army in Tehran, or even the establishment of an "Islamic" military regime similar to that instituted in Pakistan by Zia ul-Haq.S
The Iranian left, unfortunately, is too weakened today to exert an influence on the situation in the country. It is to be hoped that Khomeini's death will offer it an opportunity to rebuild itself on new bases, drawing the lessons from its grave errors in the past. * Sin the role of the army, sce Impenialism and the 17 Gulf War " JV 132, December 21, 1987. June 26, 1989 • #166 International Viewpoint
Bureaucracy left with
POLAND also that a good number of them took the opportunity to issue a strong notice to the out, now!"
bureaucracy: "Get.
Adam
Michnik talks about "a potentially revolubarely a scrap of tionary situation."4 results from
The first election the
"closed constituencies," where the military and police vote, indicate that the ferpolitical cover IF THERE WERE any need to point up once again the illegitimacy of the bureaucratic Polish regime, the June 4 election did so resoundingly. Not a single member of the PZPR [Polish United Workers' Party, the CP] was elected in the first round of the legislative elections! Out of the 261 seats they could hope to win in both houses, the candidates backed by Lech Walesa got 252 the first time around. The rate of abstention was nearly 38%. CYRIL SMUGA