(Taken from Against Capital publication no. 57, March 2022)
With a look at the one-year tables in the magazine Against Capital, make a result with this theme clear to us that : the total growth of the protests in the year 2017 compared to the year 2016 was only 9% , meanwhile, the growth of strikes in 2017 compared to 2016 is 59% . The same trend has continued with more intensity and scope in 2018 , as, the growth of the protests in 2018 compared to the previous year is 34% , but in 2019, it decreases by about 37% . The growth of labor protests in 2020 was at its highest level of 78% , which is higher than the previous year. This trend of labor protests continued in 2021 and to the figure of 2334 cases of labor protests that means that is 27% more than the year before. This process of protests of the working masses has involved massive masses of tens of thousands of workers. From workers in the realm of education to the realm of health, municipal workers and companies, workers in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries since late June began with a firm stand against the contracting capitalists and continued until October and after that, the workers in the education sector rallied, went on strike and protested under the pressure of poverty, low wages and short-term contracts against the capitalist government which lasted until March. All these protests and the high numbers of workers participating in the protests and strikes indicate the quantitative and numerical excellence of the labor movement against capital, and what a great mass of owrkers has done so far this year is debatable. Like every moment of every protest and uprising, it contains its strengths and weaknesses. Issues that need to be critically discussed, and what will happen next and how the fate of the workers´ struggle will be done is a very important issue that it´s largely related to the type of evaluation and critical confrontation of class workers with the strengths and weaknesss points. Workers with slogans such as “ teachers are ware, and hate discrimination ” or wage matching, nothing but confrontation with other workers, and resulting in nothing but the weakening and disintegration of the class lines of the workers against the capitalists and their government. The slogan such as “ incompetent manager, resign, resign ”, “ the worker is aware, hates discrimination ”, or “ an embesslement will be reduced, our problem is solved ” to change the minister and the director of capital and capitalism and like that we´ve started protests and streets demonstrations. A number of teachers have tied their destiny and their protests to the union organization called ُ Teachers´ Union, and with some slogans which says they consider themselves separate from the working class, named themselves Middle Class !!
If we´re oil workers, in our protests of the last few months, we´ve considered ourselves merely Oil Workers ! This is a catastrophe that affects our social class, the working class. We identify ourselves by the type of capitalist ownership, capitalist property, and capitalist trade union divisions and remain ourselves in this framework set by capital and capitalism, and more Catholic than the Pope, we do whatever capitalism needs to survive. We very proud call ourselves the Workers´of Haft Tappeh, Oil Industry Workers, Teachers and Retirees and Nurses and Medical Staff or other industrial units !! We´ve never considered ourselves as members of a social class, the working-class, that social class that is the target of the crushing pressures of capitalist exploitation, captive of the brutal ruling of capitalism. A social class that is constantly fighting against the exploitation, oppression, crimes and inhumanity of capitalism. We´ve denied our class identity as a social class !
On the other hand, the main focus of the uprising in recent years has been the low level of wages and temporary contracts. We believe that workers´wages shouldn´t depend on the accumulation of capital and the rate of profits. Indeed, wages are just a small drop from the mass surplus values that produced by the working class. In capitalist society, the amount of wages is also an unquestionable function of the price of products, especially the products needed by the daily life of workers and for this reason, with the daily and hourly increase in prices, so the purchasing power of the working masses decreases. The pressure of falling labor-force prices, lack of stability in future threaten and annoy workers with poverty and unemployment. The only solution, the only way out is to tie our share to the whole of what we workers produce and not calculating wages based on the poverty line, not taking into account annual inflation and not how much more or less our wages are calculated and compared with another factory´s workers wages. The annual social products we produce must be the basis of our wages and in this way, we will class struggle against capital and capitalism. Unlike the capitalists who want accumulate all the social production of the year, we workers want this product to be paid as wages. For this purpose, we must try for unanimity, class bonding and connection and strong nationwide class struggle in the same path. The shut down of production wheel at the same time and in same path , along an dialogue with each other and leave the fate of any strike and protest to council decisions in the the real anti-capitalist councils. Take the path to become an effective allied council social class power against capital. A council power based on the intervention, solution and exercise of the conscious, inluential and capable will of all members of the working-class which derives its source of class power from the role-playing and conscious intervention of each one of us. Each one of us relies on different capabilities but based on class consciousness and cognition that connects us to each other .
Ibrahim Payandeh
March 2022
