A better world is possible
To change the world and to create a better one has always been a profound aspiration of people throughout human history. It is true that even the present-day so-called modern world is dominated by fatalistic ideas, religious as well as non- religious, which portray the present plight of humanity as somehow given and inevitable.
Nevertheless, the actual lives and actions of people themselves reveal a deep-seated belief in the possibility and even the certainty of a better future. The hope that tomorrow’s world can be free of today’s inequalities, hardships and deprivations, the belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come, is a deep-rooted and powerful outlook in society that guides the lives and actions of vast masses of people.
The Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI), first and foremost, belongs here, to the unshakable belief of countless people and successive generations that building a better world and a better future by their own hands is both necessary and possible.
Revolution and reform
WPI fights for the establishment of a free and equal communist society; a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society’s direction and future. WPI believes that the establishment of a communist society is possible this very day.
However, the revolutionary struggle to build a new world is inseparable from the daily effort to improve the living conditions of working humanity in this same world. Thus, as long as and wherever capitalism prevails, WPI struggles for the most profound and far-reaching political, economic, social and cultural reforms that raise the living standard of people and their political and civil rights to the highest possible level.
Our differences from traditional communist and socialist movements
Historically, WPI emerged through a fundamental critique of, and in distinction to, the various strands of non-working-class communism and socialism in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Formulated as ‘worker-communism’ by the prominent Iranian Marxist and founder of WPI Mansoor Hekmat (1951-2002), this critique explained existing communism and socialism as the communism of other social and class movements, which had appropriated the cause and name of socialism towards their own class objectives and causes (for example, building a national state, industrialisation, liberation from colonialism and imperialism, etc.). This appropriation by other class movements, which took place due to the immense prestige and influence of Marxism and communism globally, in particular following the political victory of workers in the 1917 October revolution, resulted also in the transfiguration of the fundamental ideas of Marxism.
In contrast, the worker-communist critique sought to redefine and reclaim communism and Marxism as the anti-capitalist critique of the industrial worker aiming to abolish private property and wage labour; objectives which were totally alien to the aims of non-working-class social movements (such as nationalism, reformism and democracy) that had adopted the name of communism and Marxism.
WPI thus never believed that socialism had been established in the USSR, the Eastern bloc, China or any other country in the world, maintaining that what took place in the Stalin era was not the construction of socialism but the reconstruction of the capitalist national economy according to a statist and managed model.
But the Soviet Union was not the only source of non-working class, bourgeois, communism in the 20th century. In Western Europe, offshoots of non-worker communism sprang into existence which, while sharing fundamental elements with the economic outlook of the communism of the Eastern bloc, namely substitution of economic statism for socialism and preservation of the wage-labour system, criticised the Soviet experience and held their distance from it from democratic, nationalist, humanist and modernist standpoints. Western Marxism, Eurocommunism, the New Left and the different branches of Trotskyism were among the prominent tendencies of non-worker communism in Western Europe. In the less developed countries and former colonies, nationalism and anti-colonial leanings of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, and in some cases, peasant movements, formed the stuff of a new kind of Third Worldist communism. The archetype of this communism was Maoism and Chinese Communism which deeply influenced the views and politics of so-called communist groups in the less developed countries.
The governmental alternative of WPI for Iran
In Iran, WPI fights for the revolutionary overthrow of the current religious dictatorship, the Islamic Republic, and its replacement by a free, secular, modern and prosperous state, a socialist republic.
WPI fights for a political system based on direct and continuous governance by the people through their councils, functioning as both legislative and executive, from the local up to the national level; a political system of people’s direct democracy.
The immediate demands and goals of WPI are set out comprehensively in Part Two of its programme, A Better World. As part of the goals, demands, principles and norms which the party will implement on taking political power, our party calls for the:
- Establishment of a political structure based on people’s direct and permanent participation in political power; i.e. a council-based political system
- Dissolution of the army, the IRGC and other professional armed forces, as well as all secret military, security and espionage organisations; creation of a militia force of people’s councils.
- Abolition of unelected bureaucracy; direct participation in administration
- An independent judiciary; legal justice for all
- Complete separation of religion from the state and the educational system
- Establishment of far-reaching, unconditional, guaranteed and equal political and civil rights and liberties for all
- Unconditional freedom of belief, conscience and expression
- Complete equality of women and men
- Abolition of compulsory hijab (the Islamic veil for women) and all the religious laws of the Islamic Republic
- Abolition of all forms of discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, race, religion, age, disability and so on
- Protection of the rights of the child; every child’s right to a happy, secure and creative life
- Freedom of religion and of atheism; an end to state financial support to religious bodies and institutions; freedom to criticise religion and any other views, sanctities and beliefs
- Unconditional right to form and join any political organisation
- Unconditional right to form and join any trade union or other labour organisations; the unrestricted right to strike and of secondary picketing
- An independent judiciary based on presumption of innocence, the rights of the accused and the principle of correctional and rehabilitative justice in place of retributive justice
- Abolition of the death penalty and life sentence
- Free health care available to all
- Free education (from primary to tertiary levels) available to all
- Free public transport available to all
- Guaranteed suitable housing for all. Housing costs must not exceed 10% of the individual’s or family’s income; any excess to be covered by state subsidies
- Introduction of a maximum 30-hour working week (25-hour week in heavy occupations)
- Reduction of the retirement age to 55 years or after 25 years of employment (after 18 years in heavy occupations); payment of a pension equivalent to the highest pay received when employed
- Introduction of a minimum wage set by workers’ representatives; automatic rise in the minimum wage proportional to inflation
- Unemployment benefit according to the last pay received, for every unemployed person over 16 who is ready for work
- Disability benefit for all disabled people
- Protection of the environment
- Prevention of cruelty to animals
- Nuclear disarmament in Iran and the world
- …
WPI regards itself as part of the worldwide working-class movement aiming to replace the current capitalist system, geared to creating profits for the ruling few, by an equal, free and prosperous socialist society, geared to the interests, welfare and wellbeing of all.
WPI stands in material and moral solidarity with working-class and socialist movements and all social movements in various countries which fight for similar rights and freedoms as those contained in the party’s programme.
Join the fight to build a better world!
The principles, goals and immediate demands of the Worker-communist Party are set out fully in the programme of the party, A Better World, which can be read here.