Mazdak

[A.R.Amistad]

I wanted to put Mazdak and his ideology in a historical materialist perspective, and this goes back to my earlier question of "weas some form of socialism possible before capitalism?" (This is excluding 'primitive communism, of course.) I wanted to talk about the example of Mazdak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdak#Origins

was Mazdakism totally impossible, or was it possible in some way for Mazdak to have led a social revolution, based in what I assume was the slave class of a slave society in Persia, to establish some form of pre-industrial socialism? Of course ethically and morally I would like it to be the case, but was Mazdak's idea of social revolution impossible in his society, or was it plausible in one form or another?

I also do recognize that Mazdak ultimately failed, but was this inevitable because of the social base, and how come? Just some things I have been pondering.

[Red Commissar]

Well, I think we would have to look at it from two perspectives

-Like the Gracchi, the implications of Mazdak's plans would have come into direct conflict with the ruling class of Persia at the time. While the Shah and some nobles allowed Mazdak to operate because they were either genuinely enthralled by some aspects of the idea (see how liberal progressives operate in our world), or felt he was harmless. The moment it got to the point that they would stand to lose a lot and their power, they began to move against him before he could consolidate power.

-The religious establishment. I think this had always been a third rail, and Mazdak had begun to make moves against the established religion of Zoroastrianism. The clergy and their supporters among the nobility would not have wanted to lose the influence Zoroastrianism had over the masses. Use the power of religion to rile up the masses against Mazdak.

The extent Mazdak wished to institute his ideas and the ramifications it would pose for the ruling class was enough for them to put him down. Subsequent histories by the empire would relegate Mazdak to a trickster and con-artist, often focusing a lot on his free-love mentality. I recall when I read the entry in the Shahnameh about Mazdak, one would come away seeing Mazdak as a sex-crazed con-artist, something akin to Robert Matthews of early 1800s America. In that way the empire made sure that Mazdak was written off as a lunatic, and that his ideas won't take root again in the empire.

[Kiev Communard]

The Mazdakist movement was indeed one of the most revolutionary ones of the Early Medieval period and would play a great role in the emergence of such Agrarian-Utopist movement of the Iranian culture world as Khurramites, which were feared by the Arab Caliphate the most of all insurrectionary movements and whose struggle culminated in the epic uprising of 816-837 CE led by Babak Khorram-din, one of the most prominent freedom fighters of the Medieval history. Unfortunately, though his legacy remains in the Iranian, Tajik and especially Azerbajani folklore, his name is relatively unknown outside of the academia on the West.

Some other Utopian Communist movements of the Medieval Middle East, such as the Qarmathians, who established Plato-style utopia in modern Bahrain in 899 CE (though, of course, not socialist due to existence of slavery) and defied the power of the Abbasid Caliphate, going as far as capturing Mecca in 930 CE, were also to a certain extent influenced by the Mazdakist teachings (at least so their opponents claimed to denigrate them).

As to the Mazdakists themselves, their greatest weakness was their leader's reliance upon the Shah's protection. While weak-minded Shah Kavadh thought that the Mazdakist egalitarianism could be used to curb the power of higher nobility and mobed (the Zoroastrian priesthood), his more despotic son and successor Anushiravan hated the Mazdakists, viewing them (correctly) as the threat to the whole of the social order, so when he got the influence over his aging father, he would swiftly use the armed forces of surviving military nobility to slaughter the Mazdakists, who mistakenly thought that Kavadh would protect them and didn't have any military organization of their own.

The topic of the Mazdakist movement was to a certain extent researched by the Soviet (especially Azerbajani) scholars, but unfortunately the Anglo-American historians mostly ignore this theme.