On this May Day, International Workers’ Day, this is our declaration to all the fighters against the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) calls itself “revolutionary”, but in fact from its inception in coming to power, it ushered in bloody repression of real revolutionaries. It used the word “revolution” to confuse and mislead the masses in order to hide its real fascistic nature, just as Hitler used the word “socialist” in his fascist party to unite some of the workers and masses of the German people.

The Islamic Republic is a fascist regime that has integrated religion and the state, and its laws are based on the Sharia law of the Koran. Fascism means absolute disregard for the people’s rights. It means firing upon striking workers, shooting down Afghan refugees who enter or are inside Iran, or shooting down those smuggling fuel (known as Sookhtbaran) or those smuggling goods (known as Koolbaran) across borders just to survive.* Fascism means imprisoning women just for refusing to wear the forced hijab. It means suffocating the creativity of artists. It means preventing the freedom of thought and expression. Fascism means attacking, persecuting and killing Baháʼís simply because they are of the Baháʼí religion. It means laws based on the inquisition and condemnation of those with no religion or for being communist.

This regime has never been a revolutionary regime. It is a fascist and counter-revolutionary regime. Revolution means overthrowing all the old, obsolete ideas and relations between human beings, into the dustbin of history.

To understand how our society can change qualitatively, how to get rid of the hell created by this fascist regime that imposes itself on more than eighty million people, to be free from political, ideological, gender-based and national discrimination, the poverty and economic hardship, we must stand up against the onslaught of this fascist regime.

We must fight for freedom of expression and the right to protest in general, and stand up against attacks on communism and communists in particular. We must create an atmosphere of hatred and outrage against the suppression of dissent and those opposing this regime in the whole society.

Over the last two centuries, workers around the world have dealt heavy blows against capitalism in various ways, yet capitalism has been able to withstand and overcome those blows. As a result, the class divisions and social distinctions have intensified and in a few decades have assumed a dizzying momentum in more terrifying forms than ever before.

Look at the world today: how hundreds of millions of migrant workers are in search of being slaves to one job or another; how hundreds of millions of women have become cornerstones of the profitability of capital accumulation in the sweatshops of the world; and how the Middle East is burning in the destructive wars waged by the reactionary governments of the region from Iran and Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel as well as the imperialist powers.

Look at Afghanistan. For decades it has been the arena of aggression and occupation by US imperialism. The US invaded it twenty years ago under the banner of “liberating women from the Taliban.” Today, in the name of “peace and tranquility,” it agrees and unites with the same Taliban.

Look at the functioning of the world capitalist system. This system has brought more poverty, hunger and unemployment, wars and displacement, migrations and fascism, and racism and religious fundamentalism. It has forced the vast majority of our people around the world into helplessness, desperation and division. This capitalist system now threatens the very survival of human beings and life itself by its destruction of the environment with its consequences.

Look at [the] coronavirus/COVID19 pandemic. It emerged from the heart and the way this exploitative and destructive social-production system functions. It has turned every minute in the lives of hundreds of millions of people into a hell and terror on earth.

In such a situation, the scientific emphasis of Bob Avakian must be understood and amplified: “We have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!”

That is, to change this situation, science and the scientific method are needed. Just as COVID19 cannot be eradicated without science, capitalism cannot be eliminated without the science of communism. Embracing and acting on this scientific fact is the first step to creating a revolutionary transformation in the struggle against the Islamic Republic regime. In the words of Marx: “When the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice.” (Marx’s letter to Ludwig Kugelmann 1868)

Communism is a science founded by Marx and has been further developed by Bob Avakian into a more advanced/developed science: the New Communism. The New Communism has enormous scientific power to lead the second wave of communist revolutions, but only if this science is in the hands of thousands and tens of thousands of people and becomes the guide to people’s thinking and actions.

The first wave of communist revolution began with Marx and led to victories of the socialist revolution in the Soviet Union (1917-1956) and then in China (1949-1976). But those revolutions were defeated shortly and capitalism was revived in those countries, which unleashed capitalism to become even more aggressive all over the world. The capitalist system has survived over the past few decades because no other socialist revolution has succeeded and most social movements have maneuvered within the existing framework of this system. Thus capitalism has become even more confrontational or toughened. The capitalist gates were thrown wide open to the vengeful and aggressive intensification of exploitation and poverty. It reversed and robbed every bit of the achievements of the socialist revolutions of the past, including from the workers’, the intellectuals’, and the women’s liberation movements.

Most importantly, the slanders against communism and the history of communist revolutions, the opposition to the revolutionary communist parties, have become a virtue in academic and intellectual communities. The governments or powers-that-be, with all their propaganda power, repeated and taught the greatest contemporary lies about the “catastrophic experience of socialism and communism.” So much so that “anti-communism” became a powerful propaganda movement.

In Iran, the theocratic regime and its security, intelligence and inquisitive agencies warmly supported this intellectual regression. They have replaced science and scientific thought and discoveries with blind pursuit of superstition and ignorance. In the face of this situation, not only we must not retreat, but we must accelerate challenging all the nonsense. The future of humanity depends on this approach. It is vital and urgent for us to be in the forefront of defending the reality of communism; to learn and apply the New Communism, to organize ourselves and organize others—in the context of the parties and organizations based on the New Communism in Iran and anywhere else in the world. It is this and only this dynamic that can strengthen the core, broaden the strength of all social movements.

With this in mind, let’s turn May Day and the months that follow into a campaign to introduce the New Communism, to raise up the banner of the “Manifesto and Program of the Communist Revolution in Iran” and the draft “Constitution of the New Socialist Republic in Iran.” Let us spread the rebellion and struggle against the fascist regime of the Islamic Republic with a hundred prudent means, as Mao Zedong said: “Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one: It is right to rebel against reactionaries.”

Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

May 1, 2021

*Footnote by revcom: Extreme poverty has forced many people, mostly youth, into the informal economy. They engage in dangerous activities to survive. On the eastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, these Sookhtbaran smuggle fuel in buckets, containers and trucks from Iran. The Koolbaran are those who smuggle goods from Iraq into Iran, through the mountains of Kurdistan. These men and women, boys and girls, are constantly harassed, arrested and even killed by border guards. [back]