Thoughts on Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control by Assef Bayat

Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title above a picture of a mass rally of Iranian workers around the Azadi Tower in Tehran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

This book has several merits. First, it outlines its theoretical framework through detailing Marxist theories of management in capitalist workplaces and of workers’ control and then develops it through applying it to historical examples of defensive and offensive workers’ control in both the Global North and the Global South.

Second, it engages in a history of the development of capitalism in Iran from the 19^th century until the 1978 Iranian Revolution and then uses this history to detail the growth of the Iranian working-class, with a focus on the industrial labour market that was formed in this period and the rural origin of the Iranian working-class.

Third, it engages in a detailed analysis of how proletarianisation happened in Iran during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, or the process by which the Iranian working-class came into existence, with it also examining resistance to proletarianisation as well as the cultural traits that the new Iranian working-class retained from its rural origins as well as the new traits it adopted.

Fourth, it examines in how the exploitation that Iranian workers suffered at the hands of the Iranian capitalist class, the political domination that they were subjected to at the hands of the Shah and the horrendous work conditions that led to industrial accidents which resulted in chronic diseases and workplace deaths were the material conditions that resulted in mass opposition to the Shah amongst the Iranian working-class in the lead up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Fifth, it details how the above outlined material conditions led to the Iranian working-class engaging in mass strikes, workplace occupations, kidnapping managers and other forms of direct action in early 1978 that combined with the mass demonstrations and other forms of protest by Iranian students and the Iranian middle-class led to the fall of the Shah in early 1979.

Sixth, it analyses how in the course of the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian working-class formed shuras/councils in workplaces, universities, schools, villages and within the military, with it then analysing the forms that shuras took, their legal status, the different political tendencies views of the shuras as well as their relation to the broader democratic struggle in Iran.

Seventh, it examines how Iranian socialists reacted to the shuras as well as the workers conception of the shuras through interviewing Iranian workers who participated in the shuras.

Eighth, it explains why the shuras declined and ultimately disbanded in the 1980’s due to a combination of suppression by the Iranian theocratic capitalist state that was formed after the Iranian Revolution, the lack of a nationwide coordinating structure between the shuras as well as the failure of the shuras to resolve the contradiction between the intellectual and manual labour.

Ninth, it provides a detail analysis of how the Iranian theocratic capitalist state suppressed the shuras through a combination of repression (including arresting, imprisoning, torturing and executing shura members that ultimately led to the shuras being banned and replaced by one-man management), co-optation and reforms through legalising and establishing theocratic shuras as institutions of co-management and supervision to replace revolutionary shuras, granting some material concessions to Iranian workers and spreading theological ideology amongst the Iranian working-class.

Tenth, it uses the above analysis to draw lessons on how future attempts at workers’ control can be successful, with it arguing that the capitalist division of labour needs to be dismantled from the outset of the establishment of workers’ control, that workers’ control needs to be generalised across society and that it must be interconnected with the democratisation of political life.

However, this book does have its issues. First, while it discusses some ethnic minorities within the Iranian working-class, it does not connect this discussion to an analysis of the history and the systemic operation of racialisation and nation-formation in Iran and their implications for the shuras.

Second, it only briefly discusses patriarchy in Iran in the context of hierarchies of age among the Iranian working-class and does not engage in a systemic analysis of patriarchy in Iran well as how it conditioned the shuras.

Third, it only briefly discusses the Iranian socialist parties relationship with the shuras and as a result fails to provide an in-depth analysis of this relationship.

Fourth, its discussion of the role of religion within the Iranian working-class and within the Iranian capitalist theocratic state strangely fails to deploy Marxist theories and critiques of religion, with their instead being a very surface-level analysis provided.

Fifth, its analysis of the internal contradictions of the shuras focuses on the division of labour between them and does not discuss the internal divisions within the Iranian working-class along regional, ethnic, national, religious and gender lines.

Sixth, its claims that the theocrats during the Iranian Revolution were anti-capitalist is dubious, as there are repeated discussions of state capitalism in the context of the development of capitalism in Iran as well as in the context of the response of capitalist states to class struggle. Given this, its own evidence and analysis demonstrates that the theocrats were supporters of a particular form of state capitalism and were not anti-capitalist.

Seventh, when it discusses syndicalism, it like many other Marxist accounts incorrectly describes it as being created and developed by the Industrial Workers of the World and Georges Sorel, when it reality, it was created and developed by the collectivist anarchist movement that arose within the First International.

Eighth, its conception of Marxist theory is class reductionist and economically determinist and so contains all of the problems inherent to such a conception.

Ninth, its proposals for how workers’ control can be successful in future have multiple problems. Politically, its proposal for a state that help facilitate the expansion of workers’ control across society is flawed because the in Iranian Revolution and other revolutions in the 20^th century, capitalist and Soviet-type states suppressed workers’ control through repression, reform, co-optation and concessions. Economically, its proposal for a mixed economy that combines nationalisation with workers’ control alongside a constrained and regulated private sector is unpersuasive, as attempts to do this in the 20^th century revolutions resulted in workers’ control being suppressed by the state or being gradually eroded and dismantled by processes of commodification and marketisation that ultimately resulted in the restoration of capitalism. Geopolitically, there is no discussion of how trying to implement these proposals within one country will lead to the capitalist world system suppressing it through military invasion, blockades, sanctions and/or gradual reintegration into the capitalist world market and how as a result a world revolution is needed.

Tenth, Nicaragua under the Sandanistas is cited as an inspirational example of how workers’ control can be successfully implemented in the Global South, but none of the socialist critiques of the Sandanistas that were released in the 1980’s, when this book was published, are engaged with, critiques which have been proven to be subsequently correct in light of the capitalist trajectory of Sandanista rule in Nicaragua.

Overall, I’d recommend this book, as it provides an informative Marxist analysis of workers’ control during the 1978 Iranian Revolution and its suppression by the counter-revolutionary Iranian theocratic capitalist state.