In the present situation, when alternatives are offered in response to the people's uprising, it's necessary to discuss the similarities between the Islamic Republic and the Pahlavi Dynasty regime and what they have in common. Not only to set the record straight about the massive amounts of unreal and even fictional propaganda about the living conditions of the [Iranian] people and society during the two Shahs of the Pahlavi Dynasty (which are constantly lied about in cyberspace and on satellite dish networks), but also to make clear that they have a lot in common, and share many of the same characteristics.

There's no doubt that many features of the Pahlavi Dynasty differ from those of the Islamic Republic: their ideologies, the eras they were/are in power, and [what else was going on] when they emerged on the international scene. These are different, and their regimes’ contradictions and accomplishments differ. But they share one thing in common: both are dictatorial governments of the oppressor classes.

Above all, both were, and are, tools for the exploiting and oppressive big landowners and capitalists to impose their will on the majority of the Iranian people. Despite differences in [their regimes’] political and ideological superstructure and methods of governing, [and in] the character of their respective economic infrastructures, it is the exploitation of the fruits of the labor of oppressed classes that provides the basis for each of them to remain in power.

Although both of them strut and boast about political autonomy, about being independent of "foreigners," and about [Iran’s] role as a regional superpower, the economic structure of the Iranian society is in fact tied to the global system of imperialist capitalism and subject to the system’s international political and economic vicissitudes and upheavals. Because of this, it was and is affected in various ways by the political will of the imperialists, whether it is the U.S. or Britain or the European Union, today's Russia or China.

And since both represent precisely the class dictatorship of capitalists and big landowners—though with differences in what they look like and in their superstructures—they are both compelled to impose all shapes and sizes of oppression, discrimination, injustice and crimes, on the shoulders and lives of majority of people in Iran and sometimes in the region, because they are inseparably part and parcel of the capitalist system.

Therefore, what is posted with the hashtag #Reactionary_Shah_&_Sheikh are simply the images and documentary representations of the pain and suffering imposed by the two regimes—Pahlavi and Islamist—on people as a consequence of their class nature, no matter whether inflicted willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, compassionately or wickedly. Undoubtedly, the similarities of the crimes committed against the people by these two regimes are not limited to these examples.

The people, the majority of the people in our society—the workers and toiling masses in the city and in the countryside, the impoverished and the marginalized people, the youth, the intellectuals and the artists, the women and non-Persian nationalities in Iran, teachers and nurses and the retired people—none are doomed to choosing one or the other of these two reactionaries. It is not the inevitable destiny of our people to be condemned to life under either the despotic torture of combat boots or the [mullah’s] sandals, [to be ruled by] crown or turban, Sharia law or hereditary monarchy.

What we’re talking about is a fundamentally different and qualitatively better type of state, one that is the opposite of these two historically outmoded and disgraced corruptions, the opposite of these two ways of being exploited, oppressed, discriminated against, the opposite of any form and expressions of the dictatorship of the capitalist class; [we're talking about] the revolutionary dictatorship and democracy of the proletariat that must be established, about the "New Socialist Republic of Iran." This is a different path, society and world [that will be brought into being] after a communist revolution, and accomplished with the participation and the determination of tens of millions of masses of people.

Our Party has set forth, for everyone to view and discuss, the features of such a society in the "Constitution of the New Socialist Republic of Iran (Proposed Draft)." In order to implement such a possible and desirable goal, we ask all freedom lovers, justice seekers, all the oppressed and destitute people, all those who talk in whispers about a world free of every kind, form and expression of exploitation, oppression and discrimination, to come forward in order to achieve such a goal through a widespread and all-around revolutionary and communist struggle.