Mansoor Hekmat and worker-Communism

[Rawthentic]

Can anyone explain to me more about the theories and standpoints of worker-Communism and Mansoor Hekmat? Thanks

Mansoor Hekmat Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hekmat-mansoor/index.htm)

[Devrim]

From the ICC:

Originally posted by ICC
The origins of the WCPI – the unholy alliance of Iranian Stalinism and Kurdish nationalism

The origins of the WCPI lie in a group called the Unity of Communist Militants (UCM), which was formed in Iran in 1979 at a time when a huge proletarian movement was shaking the country. As a reminder to today’s readers, this ferment included massive strikes and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of workers in key sectors of the economy against austerity, the war economy and state repression. Workers in the in oil refineries, for example, formed their own independent committees, inspiring class solidarity and attempts to fraternise with soldiers sent in to crush the movement (see WR 23 for an analysis of Iran at this time). The subsequent ‘Islamic revolution’ and the regime of Khomeini which replaced the Shah were in no way an expression of this movement; on the contrary, this was capital’s principle means for overcoming it.

Some of the elements who helped form the UCM may have been an expression of this movement. But whether or not some proletarian elements were involved at the beginning, the programme defended by the group and its actual practice were entirely reactionary even at this time.

Due to its radical-sounding denunciations of the Islamic state, and its agitation among militant workers with ‘democratic’ demands, e.g. for the freedom to organise and the separation of religion and state, the UCM won some support within the working class. Essentially, faced with a militant proletariat, the radical Stalinist language of the UCM, under its founder Mansoor Hekmat, was an adjunct to the efforts of part of the Iranian bourgeoisie to deflect the class struggle into demands for democracy. But in the face of the ensuing repression by the Islamic state in the cities, the group lost its potential political base, and in the context of a deepening reflux in the class struggle the group sought influence with the left-wing of the Kurdish nationalist movement, entering into an alliance with Komala (the ‘Toilers Revolutionary Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan’) in 1981.

Komala was actively engaged in mobilising workers and peasants for a local imperialist war. Its goal was to carve out a slice of the existing state in return for policing their own workers and peasants. In other words it wanted a bourgeois proto-state similar to the Palestinian nationalist factions. It was also, to this end, involved in a front with the Stalinist Kurdish Democratic Party – a party even the UCM admitted was bourgeois (see WR 57). The alliance with Komala in the ‘liberated’ areas of Kurdistan offered a political base for the growth of the UCM after the massive repression launched in June 1981.

Significantly, it was precisely in this period of defeat for the Iranian proletariat, with part of the population in Kurdistan fleeing the cities for the mountains, that in 1983 the UCM / Komala absurdly pronounced the formation of a party – the ‘Communist Party of Iran’. Under Hekmat’s leadership, the new CPI oriented itself towards organising the nationalist forces (‘peshmergas’ or fighters) as part of the inter-imperialist struggle in Kurdistan. Essentially the working class and any continuing struggles in the cities were used as an adjunct to the nationalist struggle of Komala, and the peshmerga force was seen by the CPI as ‘the military wing of the working class movement in Kurdistan’.

The unholy alliance between the Kurdish nationalist tendency and more ‘workerist’ faction proved an uneasy one, and flared into an open faction fight within the CPI, which ended in 1989 with the departure of the workerists around Hekmat to form the Worker-Communist Party of Iran in 1991. This in no way represented a break with the reactionary political positions previously defended by the UCM and CPI, but essentially a change of political strategy and tactics. The counterpart of the WCPI in Iraq was formed two years later.

Full article: http://en.internationalism.org/wr/293_wpiran.html

Devrim

[Xiao Banfa]

Their Iraqi affiliate is doing good things in that country.

Apparently they have brigades defending minorities targeted by the Islamists.
Also they are supposed to be protecting workers.

Does anyone know about the relationship of the Iraqi Freedom Congress to the
WCP Iraq?

[KC]

The WCPI was among one of the founding organizations of the IFC, and I believe is the one that formulated the idea and helped bring it to fruition.

[Rawthentic]

Devrim, is everyone who is not left-communist a Stalinist, in your opinion?

[Rawthentic]

Hekmat supported the "return to Marx", and theorised that the working class is to rely only on itself - arguing that it had been the only class to impose benefic change in the 20th century. He denied that either the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China would have been socialist countries, and presented them as nationalist-bourgeois systems that had not abolished either exploitation or wage slavery, and had not communized the means of production.

Partly inspired by Council communism, he emphasised propaganda and internal organization, arguing that "communism on the margin of society is not communism at all". Hekmat sought to combine the revolutionary effort with struggles such as that for women's rights

Thats from Wikipedia, so I can't say its too reliable.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by [email protected] 04, 2007 02:40 pm
Devrim, is everyone who is not left-communist a Stalinist, in your opinion?
No, actually I just linked to this because you asked for information on them, and it was an article I had read before. This isn't the opinion of our organisation. It comes from the ICC. I am not sure if stalinist is the right word for them, but there are certainly some Stalinist traits, the cult of personality being one of them.

Devrim