The student movement in Iran has always had a decisive importance in the people's political struggles against regimes and imperialist powers, and today the powerful arms of the nationwide uprising to overthrow the Islamic Republic are helping it rise again.

Our Student Day is also a historic international day in the anti-imperialist struggles of the world's students because it occurred on December 7, 1953. [This was] just four months after the CIA coup against Dr. Mossadegh's government, the return of the Shah to the throne and the official visit of U.S. Vice President Nixon. Tabriz University and Tehran University were the only two institutions of higher learning in Iran at that time.¹

The students, who had already launched protests against the trials of Dr. Mossadegh, protested Nixon's trip. The Shah's military forces attacked the university, killing three students: Bozorgnia and Razavi of the Tudeh party's youth organization, and Ghandchi, a supporter of [Dr. Mossadegh's] National Front.²
Now, another historical juncture challenges students [in Iran] to play their part in the struggle to rid society of another reactionary regime and its imperialist supporters.

From the early days of the [2022] uprising, many university students from Kurdistan, Mashhad, Tabriz and Gilan and various universities in Tehran have joined it. At universities, women once again were the pioneers and at the front lines.

Universities such as Science and Technology, Beheshti and Al-Zahra, commonly thought of as "apolitical," were among the first to join the protests. At Al-Zahra University in Tehran, "the most esteemed school of Islam" for women, designed to train women for service to the Islamic Republic, students gathered without hijabs and staged sit-ins and demonstrations.

Women's rebellion against compulsory hijab also made the university one of the main centers of the struggle. Taking off the hijab and tearing down the walls of gender segregation is a head-on ideological confrontation with a regime that considers [the compulsory] " hijab" more important than "animosity toward the U.S." The student gatherings, in turn, played an important role in stabilizing the ongoing street protests. The production of highly radical political artworks in defense of the people's uprising was an important development in the ideological confrontation with the Islamic Republic, as well as the abandonment of the individualistic, collaborationist ideology of "apolitical art."

At the beginning of the [uprising], the government arrested dozens of well-known students and political activists at the universities, some of whom are still in detention. These crackdowns triggered protests, including the resignations of a number of university professors.

Then we witnessed [the regime] shooting at students, which resulted in the wounding and arrests of a number of students at Guilan University and the storming of Tehran's Sharif University of Technology by the IRGC and Basij murderers who arrested and beat nearly 100 students.  [This] in turn resulted in a rapid overnight reaction by sections of the public who rushed to the aid of the students.

The nationwide uprising gave the universities a big jolt. The heat of this uprising broke the lethargy and passivity that had afflicted universities for many years, since the middle of the decade 2000 to 2010. Now, the "career" activities and the career-ism line has lost its credibility, and we are witnessing its repudiation and dismantling.  It is good that universities are now playing such a role in the current period and that it is even expanding in universities that had been completely apolitical in the past. Everyone remembers the passive atmosphere in the universities after [the] November 2019 [mass protests].

But serious political-intellectual leaps are needed so that universities and anti-regime students can play their historical social role as revolutionary intellectuals, by creating a student movement that does not lag behind society but instead becomes its liberating tribune.

Universities in Iran have had a special place in its thinking and policy making in the century since they were founded. Universities became one of the main centers of people's political struggles in society, particularly following the formation of the student movement from the 1950s onward. They were one of the most important bulwarks of the leftist and communist movements and the source of the leaders and cadre of revolutionary communist parties and organizations, the labor movement and of armed struggles.

The Student Movement That We Want

Students are neither special human beings nor do they have a special nature, but socially they have occupied a special place because, given the existing division of labor in class society, they have more opportunity to work with ideas. It is this opportunity that confers this special social role. Understanding [students’] role and [the social] standing is of vital importance to the activists and to the student movement. The student movement must be a pioneer in the struggle for emancipation and for fundamental change in human society, and the university must become a seedbed of intellectual revolution in the whole of society. Marx said that in order for a social structure to collapse in practice, it must first collapse in people's minds.³

In all parts of the world and throughout history, student movements have been political movements. When [developments] in society require it, the nature [of students] and their role [may become] the basis for the creation of a political and ideological turning point, making universities into political tribunes against the existing regime and the capitalist-imperialist world system.

In the past 44 years, the most important political issue in our society has been the existence of a theocratic fascist regime. Hundreds of research papers on its genealogy have been produced at universities around the world. But none have analyzed the fact that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in contemporary history is deeply linked to the underlying functioning of the imperialist capitalist system.

Another important factor in the defeat of the 1979 Revolution and the rise to power of the Islamist counter-revolution, was the situation in the world at that time with the revival of capitalism as the most important aspect that occurred in socialist China [1949-1976]. This historic global event severely weakened the revolutionary communist forces, and given the qualitative and quantitative weaknesses of the communist revolutionary alternative, Islamist reactionaries became the voices of a segment of the people and the standard-bearers of "anti-imperialism."

Bob Avakian’s analysis of how the functioning of the global capitalist system is at the core of Islamic fundamentalism, and that siding with either Islamic fundamentalism or imperialism will lead to strengthening both of them, is one of his most important theoretical contributions to the new communism. Without understanding this theory and making use of it, this stage of the class struggle in Iran and the Middle East would be incomprehensible.

The correct political line to confront the ruling political power in Iran requires taking a stand against both: against the Islamic Republic and against imperialism, which includes both the imperialist powers hostile to the Islamic Republic (USA and Europe) as well as the friends of the Islamic Republic (China and Russia). Because China is a supporter of the Islamic Republic and has great influence in Iran's economy and politics, exposing the nature of China's capitalism-imperialism and its inherent difference with socialist China is one of the most important political issues that the student movement cannot avoid, but must deal with.

The most important political issue raised by the current uprising, and which the student movement cannot avoid dealing with, is the question of an alternative to the Islamic Republic regime. Spontaneous tendencies dominant in the streets are to reach for some form of capitalist democracy—the kind that exists in Europe and imperialist America.  But in today's world, what has created the prosperity of Europe and imperialist America is the poverty of the "Global South" or "Third World" countries. This goal [of capitalist democracy] will never, and definitely can never, free us from poverty, unemployment, patriarchy/male supremacy, oppression of non-Persian nationalities, environmental destruction and devastating wars.  [Contrast that with] the content of a real revolution, which is precisely to overthrow the Islamic Republic and to eradicate its capitalist infrastructure through the establishment of a socialist state. This is one of the political issues of the day that needs to be addressed both on the street and in the universities. Otherwise, on the day after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic we will face a catastrophic impasse like 1979.

The current uprising has provided a great opportunity to create a broad and radical political student movement whose characteristics are: rejection of the Islamic Republic, rejection of the integration of religion and state, rejection of capitalism and capitalism-imperialism, an internationalist approach, rejection of poverty and unemployment, patriarchy/male supremacy, oppression of non-Persian nationalities, reactionary and imperialist wars, battling supressive crackdowns by security forces, and environmental destruction.

The creation of a broad and radical student movement is the best way to support  the current uprising to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In order to open the way for real revolution, and to prevent failure upon further failure, we need to create a pole of revolutionary communist students based in the new communism, because, without the knowledge and science of revolution based on the new communism, we will never achieve a real social revolution and emancipation from all forms of oppression and exploitation.

The Islamic Republic and other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois tendencies at the university have tried and will try hard to prevent the dissemination and awareness of [communist theory] and the promotion of communist organization in students’ struggles. Eliminating the right to form a party, preventing dissemination of communist ideas and outlawing politics at universities and in society will have terrifying consequences, especially in a world where human beings are standing at a fork in the road leading to either a horrifying future or a liberating future.

Communist Party of Iran, MLM

www.cpimlm.org  12/6/2022