When some workers in Iran, especially those who claim to be pioneers of the struggle of the working masses, make a fuss about supports of the leaders of British and German, French, Italian and Scandinavian trade unions for “ trade union rights “ of the Iranian working class, there is no choice but to say that history has gone backwards.!! Of course, this word has an emotional aspect, but its earthly, material and class expression and meaning is that the enchanting power of capital in brainwashing people is millions of times more than previous social systems. Only, after the terrible and criminal bombing of Vietnam by the predatory US military, only a handful of these union and syndicate leaders, under the heavy pressure from the workers´ side and public opinion, were forced to speak out. At no other time, no voice from them has been heard in class support of workers anywhere in the world. During the disputes between the capitalist states and military conflicts, the leaders of the unions, without any doubt, allies of the capitalist state of their own country, have always been working to strengthen one section of the bourgeoisie against another section in other countries. The policy makers, designers and leaders of the unions are part of the capitalist class of the countries and represent the bourgeoisie in the labor movement and have an important and an undeniable share in the ownership and power as well as profits of capital in the biggest trusts. The union leaders and reformists imposed on the labor movement are complicit in the brutal exploitation of the working masses of the world, and are also an important part of the civil political power structure and the capitalist state. Every policy and decision they take is aimed at dissolving and integrating the labor movement into the anti-human order of capital and burying every anti-capitalist protest of the working class in the graveyard of capitalism. Trade unions have never, either during the continuing bloodbath and torture by the royal regime of capitalism or during the establishment of the savage Islamic bourgeoisie, did not support the struggles of the working masses in Iran and even did not show any form of class solidarity with the Iranian workers. In the bloodbath and killing of political prisoners in 1989, the massacre of seven thousand the freedom fighters by the Islamic rulers of capital, despite the great efforts of the leftist forces in exile, none of these unions and their leaders were willing to write any line of protest against this genocide. They just kept silent and were unconcerned about it. In the massive uprising of workers and toilers in January 2018, these trade unions with their leaders remained silent and even did not ask any worker to raise a protest call for 30 seconds in solidarity and support of the Iranian labor movement. They repeated and showed the same shameless reaction to the glorious uprising of Iranian workers in November 2020. They always have done so, everywhere and at all times. History does not remember that these unions and their leaders, under the title of solidarity with the struggles of the workers of this or that country, even have demanded to stop the capitalist production wheel for a few seconds. Stopping the production wheel !! Not at all!! They have not even issued a call for a few-minute street protesting anywhere too.
The whole of this disgraceful history screams out a fact. If today the heads of the unions, these defenders of the interests of the bourgeoisie in the labor movement in England, Germany and France or anywhere else, issue a call to support the ” rights of the working masses of Iran ” !!! If they ask the workers of their country to prepare to march to the parliaments !! It only carries one meaning ! And that is, this explicit earthly and material meaning that the unions, as inseparable parts of the bourgeois order and coordination machine, doing what the own bourgeois state wants. Indeed, their task is to sacrifice the working class and subjugate the power of the workers to serve and strengthen one section of the bourgeoisie against another section, and also the defense and strengthening of one pole of capitalism against another pole, and consolidation of the position and foundations of a party’s governance, and it is from one pole of the bourgeoisie against a party, regime and another pole. The same thing they did in Poland, and in Latin America and everywhere else. There are few American coups that won without the help of union leaders.
If these unions and their leaders have raised the banner of supporting ” Iranian workers’ rights ” today, it is nothing more than a deceptive lie. Because they play the role of supporting the state of the capitalists and run the mission of defending the wage slavery system. The current role of the trade-unions, like other capitalist institutions, is to become a tool like other tools and levers of pressure of the capitalist state of America and its western allies against the Islamic regime of capital, just as the royalist Reza Pahlavi and other right-wing political levers are responsible for playing a similar role. The difference between the first ones and the latter´s role is only one thing. The unions, like other capitalist institutions, do their usual and routine work, the latter ones smell of barbecue, but have misread the facts. While the Western bloc of capitalism has been never oblivious to the favorable and unfavorable alternatives, in spite of all its historical class purification, it knows well that exhumed people like the royalist “Reza Pahlavi” and others like them do not have the capacity to become an alternative. The whole capacity and importance of these can be summed up in becoming a lever for applying pressure. By applying pressure to bring the Islamic Republic to its senses and convince it to align with the Western bloc. In short, what the trade unions have done and still are doing, has nothing to do with any form of support for the “rights” and struggles of Iranian workers, because there is nothing else except to do their duty in the current conflicts between the savagery of the states of the bourgeoisie, for or against this or that government. It is a disaster if an Iranian worker falls into the trap of these demagogues. The Iranian workers must recognize their own anti-capitalist class power, and organize this class power and use it against capitalism.
Let’s share a point with the masses of fellow workers in Europe or anywhere else. We respect their sense of solidarity, but it is unfortunate that this solidarity serves the nefarious goals of unions and their corrupt and self-sold leaders. If the workers of Europe have a determined will for class solidarity, they should display this support and solidarity alongside the glorious banner of labor internationalism and its anti-capitalist aim. In protest against the prison, torture and killing of workers in Iran, in solidarity with the Iranian working masses class struggle, the European working class should be shutting down the wheel of profit generation of capitalism in their own countries, and in this way disrupt the political economic order of capitalism. If they had acted like that, they would certainly have opened a new chapter in class duty to the liberation of mankind towards the whole workers of the world.
That they don’t do so is pathetic and worthy of the most radical criticism.
“ The anti – capitalist workers of Iran “
feb. 20, 2023
