To this day, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is widely known as the “Islamic Revolution”. The history of a genuine workers’ revolution has been buried.
Workers’ councils took over factories, peasants took over the land, the army all but disappeared and came over to the side of the revolution, and discussion of Marxist ideas spread across the country. The material forces for the first healthy workers’ state since the October Revolution were all present.
The only thing missing was a genuine Communist party to carry the revolution to victory, causing a vacuum which was filled by the Ayatollahs.
Hamid Alizadeh, a leading member of the Revolutionary Communist International, in this talk will be uncovering the true history of class struggle in Iran in 1979 – to detail the inspirational movement of the Iranian working class, and to learn the lessons to ensure that future revolutionary movements do not lead down the same path of counter-revolution.