{"id":3192,"date":"2017-09-24T17:55:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T17:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hopoi.org\/?p=3192"},"modified":"2017-09-24T17:55:59","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T17:55:59","slug":"part-and-parcel-of-global-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/?p=3192","title":{"rendered":"Part and parcel of global capital"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>In late July around 50 political prisoners in Iran\u2019s Rajai Shahr prison were moved to new cells, where windows are covered by metal sheets, access to drinking water is limited and prisoners complain of suffocation and dehydration. In protest 17 of them began a hunger strike.<\/p>\n

One of them is labour activist Reza Shahabi. He has gone without food for more than 20 days and, according to his family, his physical condition has deteriorated considerably in the last few days. Shahabi is the treasurer of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and has been in and out of jail since 2010. In the spring of 2012 he was sentenced to six years by an Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran – five years for \u201cconspiracy against state security\u201d, and one year for \u201cpropaganda against the system\u201d. He was also fined and banned from all trade union activities for five years.<\/p>\n

Many Iranians have compared his plight with that of former presidential candidate and leader of the 2009 \u2018green\u2019 movement protests, Mehdi Karroubi, who is currently under house arrest. He recently staged a hunger strike, which succeeded in its aim of removing members of the security forces from his house. Karroubi\u2019s plight was widely reported by a number of media outlets, including the BBC Persian service and Voice of America, and was also widely reported inside Iran. However, when it comes to Shahabi\u2019s hunger strike, there is a deafening silence.<\/p>\n

Of course, the charges against him are nonsense: a trade unionist who has constantly opposed war and regime change from above is not a threat to \u201cstate security\u201d. However, he\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0a threat to the regime, as he symbolises workers\u2019 protests against the neoliberal economic policies of successive governments, both \u2018reformist\u2019 and conservative.<\/p>\n

In the midst of all the publicity for regime change from above (boosted no end after Donald Trump\u2019s election) it is often difficult for those opposing both the Islamic regime, together with its oppressive, neoliberal form of capitalism, and the threat of war and new sanctions to make themselves heard. But in fact Shahabi is not alone. Every day there is news of demonstrations and protests by Iranian workers across the country.<\/p>\n

A comrade reminded me recently that many of the younger supporters of the conservative cleric, Ebrahim Raisi, who stood against Hassan Rouhani in this year\u2019s presidential elections, believe corruption and the current problems of Iran\u2019s economy – in particular the financial hardship faced by the overwhelming majority of the population – is down to the specific capitalist path taken by \u2018reformists\u2019 like Rouhani. Such elements genuinely believe that a fairer economic system is possible within the framework of Iran\u2019s Islamic Republic and blame the unprecedented gap between the rich and the poor, as well as the all-encompassing corruption, solely on policies followed by the \u2018reformist\u2019 faction. They have illusions in the likes of Raisi and in supreme leader Ali Khamenei\u2019s so-called \u2018resistance\u2019 economics.<\/p>\n

Although it is correct to say that the implementation of neoliberal economic policies started with \u2018reformist\u2019 president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani (1989-97) and both the Khatami and Rouhani governments have implemented the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in terms of \u2018privatisation\u2019, casualisation of work, the imposition of \u2018white\u2019 contracts (where the employee signs a blank sheet of paper regarding terms of employment), etc, we should not forget that it was Khamenei himself who decided overnight to rewrite article 44 of the constitution, removing any legal barriers to full-scale privatisation of the state sector. The original constitution anticipated state ownership for key economic areas – although, of course, this was never enforced strictly by the market-loving clerics who came to power in 1979: after all, their social base was in the bazaar and amongst the property-owning classes.<\/p>\n

However, as time went on, the role of the private sector gradually increased. By 2004, an amendment to this article, approved by Khamenei, allowed for 80% of state assets to be privatised. The IMF and World Bank have constantly encouraged Iran to pursue these polices and in fact it was under president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supported by the conservative factions of the regime, together with Khamenei, despite his claims of being \u201con the side of the poor and the deprived sections of society\u201d, that Iran was heralded by the IMF as a \u2018model\u2019 country following its economic liberalisation programmes. Over the last few years a government body called the Iran Privatisation Organisation has pursued an aggressive policy, aiming to ensure that the remaining state-owned enterprises are privatised.<\/p>\n

Successive governments have declared the aims of Iran\u2019s economic policies in terms that include \u201ceconomic competition through the market\u201d, an \u201cincrease in labour productivity\u201d, the shrinking of government through privatisation, and a reduction in subsidies and budget costs.<\/p>\n

For all their talk of a \u2018resistance economy\u2019, the conservatives consist of individuals and institutions overseeing billion-dollar private organisations. During the presidential elections, Raisi told voters: \u201cI own nothing but a 140-square-metre apartment and a private bank account\u201d, but the reality is, he is head of the multi-billion-dollar religious foundation, Astane Quds Razavi.<\/p>\n

In 2013 Reuters revealed that Khamenei is head of an organisation created to help the poor that is now a major business worth tens of billions of dollars. In the last decade it has become a conglomerate that holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and farming.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

Of course, the idea of a third-world economy surviving independently of global capital is either day-dreaming or a deliberate lie – in the case of Iran\u2019s supreme leader and his claims of building a \u2018resistance economy\u2019 clearly the latter. It is true that, like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, Khamenei claims he is in favour of \u2018delinking\u2019 Iran\u2019s economy from western capital (his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, famously declared that dependence on Japanese capital was acceptable, as Japan was not part of the west!). But the reality is that his own \u2018charitable\u2019 multi-billion-dollar organisation, not to forget the partly privatised banks and industries owned by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards, are actually part and parcel of global capital.<\/p>\n

A few months ago Khamenei complained about the gap between the rich and the poor in Iran. But, despite the fact that the Islamic regime has been in power for over 38 years, there are many reasons why that gap keeps growing. First of all, those sections of the Iranian aristocracy and bourgeoisie that were not directly involved with the shah\u2019s regime have retained their wealth, their capital and their land: and, thanks to Iran\u2019s extremely high interest rates, that wealth grows daily. In addition the exploiting classes have been augmented by a whole new layer of\u00a0nouveaux riches<\/em>. What Iranians call\u00a0aghazadeh-ha<\/em>(sons and daughters of the ayatollahs) spend money at levels comparable to Saudi princes – driving sports cars and generally displaying their wealth.<\/p>\n

As elsewhere under neoliberal capitalism, there is no \u2018trickle-down effect\u2019. During the years of sanctions senior clerics and their closest civilian and military supporters made billions from sanction-busting and the black market, while ordinary Iranians faced hunger, abject poverty and death due to a shortage of medicines and surgical equipment. Shahrzad Elghanayan, a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter, was astonished by what she saw in a programme screened by the pro-government Press TV: \u201cIt was not just the wealth that struck me, but how freely Iran\u2019s one percenters flaunted the symbols of western decadence without fear of government retribution.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n

Nowadays no-one denies that the nuclear deal was promoted and managed by Khamenei every step of the way. One of its main aims was the further integration of Iran\u2019s economy within the global order and in this all factions of the regime, irrespective of their rhetoric, are united. The warnings of both supporters of regime change from above – who keep telling us that the supreme leader wants to isolate Iran and turn it into another North Korea – and the conservative factions – who claim they want to save Iran from globalisation – are nonsense.<\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic is and will remain an integral part of global capitalism. That is why the idea that somehow a bourgeois government (either one composed of \u2018more committed\u2019 reformists or one imposed by regime change from above) would introduce democracy and workers\u2019 rights is also a complete nonsense. Freedom of movement for capital has its rationale and the post-war commitment to democracy, trade union rights and public services has ended. There is a need more than ever for uninterrupted free movement of capital to the cheapest zones of exploitation. In the advanced capitalist countries concessions to workers are threatened, while trade unions have been considerably weakened by membership losses, as well as draconian legislation.<\/p>\n

Under such circumstances it is criminal for the Iranian left to sow hopes that bourgeois democracy can save workers such as Reza Shahabi from arrest, intimidation and long prison sentences. It is irresponsible to offer Europe or the USA as models to be followed. The gains won in the advanced capitalist countries came at the expense of the superexploited third world. We live in the era of new imperial practices – as Alain Badiou puts it, \u201cthe policy of destroying states rather than corrupting or replacing them\u201d3<\/sup>\u00a0– and that is the kind of future \u2018regime change from above\u2019 will bring to Iran.<\/p>\n

As for Reza Shahabi, we have a duty to support his struggle, calling for his immediate, unconditional release and building support for his case amongst the international working class. But we should have no illusions in the rightwing, pro-regime-change NGOs, political groups, charities and other organisations which also claim to support him. They are an insult to the Iranian working class, which, despite severe hardship, has maintained its principled opposition to foreign intervention, while pursuing class-based struggles against Iran\u2019s Islamic Republic and its internal and external capitalist allies.<\/p>\n

yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.co.uk<\/strong><\/p>\n

Notes<\/h3>\n

1. www.reuters.com\/investigates\/iran\/#article\/part1.<\/p>\n

2. www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/11\/opinion\/clerical-rule-luxury-lifestyle.html?mcubz=0.<\/p>\n

3. A Badiou\u00a0Notre mal vient de bien loin<\/em>\u00a0Paris 2015.<\/em>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late July around 50 political prisoners in Iran\u2019s Rajai Shahr prison were moved to new cells, where windows are covered by metal sheets, access to drinking water is limited and prisoners complain of suffocation and dehydration. In protest 17 of them began a hunger strike. One of them is labour activist Reza Shahabi. He … <\/p>\n

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