{"id":3246,"date":"2026-10-06T13:34:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/?p=3246"},"modified":"2026-10-06T13:34:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:34:03","slug":"the-left-of-irans-future-will-emerge-from-within-social-movements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/the-left-of-irans-future-will-emerge-from-within-social-movements\/","title":{"rendered":"The Left of Iran\u2019s Future Will Emerge from Within Social Movements"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If the Left in Iran is to once again become a social force, this path will begin neither with revisiting the history of political parties nor with repeating classical slogans. The starting point is people\u2019s real lives; the very place where economic contradictions, discrimination, deprivation of rights, job insecurity, the environmental crisis, and political repression drive people to action. Many of those who stand against this situation today may not consider themselves \u201cleft-wing,\u201d but their actions overlap with the values of social justice and freedom. A worker who resists dismissal, a teacher who demands job security, a woman who stands against discrimination, or an environmental activist who rises against the destruction of a river or forest may never have attended a party meeting. Nevertheless, these very actions, at their core, carry the same ideals that the Left has historically claimed to represent. Therefore, the Left of the future will not emerge from declaring loyalty to a predefined ideology, but from the objective necessities of life; necessities that reproduce themselves every day in the factory, school, home, farm, and street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But an individual protest, no matter how profound and sincere, will not become a lasting force until it connects with the experiences of others. A worker who rallies over unpaid wages, a teacher who stands up for job security, or a woman who fights against discrimination may initially see the issue as personal or, at most, occupational. They may think their problem can simply be resolved with their own employer or school administrator. But the repetition of experience, dialogue with others going through the same situation, and daily encounters with the structures of power behind these injustices gradually elevate the struggle from the individual to the social level. A worker who sees that their unpaid wages are not merely their own problem, but a shared condition of thousands of other workers across the country, is no longer facing a personal issue; they are confronting an economic and political system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This transition from the individual to the social does not happen automatically; it is possible only when the tools for communication, trust, and cooperation are available. Organization here plays a role beyond merely being a means of implementing pre-existing awareness; organization itself is part of the process of producing awareness and collective power. Shared experience, without organization, does not endure; it is a fire that may flare up but can just as quickly die out. And organization, if it is not connected to the real and living experiences of people, becomes an ineffective and self-centered structure that grows distant from the everyday lives of those it is supposed to represent. The history of the Iranian Left contains abundant examples of both: spontaneous movements that, despite their passion and strength, disappeared without structures to sustain them, and organizations that, despite their discipline and programs, became detached from the pulse of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left of the future, in order to respond to the real problems of society, needs knowledge that is open, critical, and capable of revision. The struggle against privatization, temporary contracts, environmental destruction, or gender inequality, without a precise understanding of the economic, legal, and managerial mechanisms that produce and reproduce these phenomena, remains limited to broad and abstract slogans. The slogan \u201cNo to privatization,\u201d without understanding how a specific transfer was carried out, who benefited from it, and what legal mechanisms made it possible, cannot become a specific and actionable demand. Therefore, the Left of the future must be able to bring research, analysis, and practical experience together and move beyond the traditional divide between the \u201ctheorist\u201d and the \u201cfield activist.\u201d Theory gains meaning and value when it helps understand social necessities and makes it possible to choose appropriate forms of organization. Experience, too, becomes a genuine social force only when it can be analyzed and transmitted to others; an experience that remains only in the memories of a few activists and is neither documented nor analyzed is lost with every wave of repression, migration, or arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political life under conditions of repression reveals realities that are not seen as clearly under normal circumstances. Prison, despite all its violence and psychological and physical pressure, can sometimes provide a space for dialogue and cooperation among different intellectual and political tendencies; people who outside prison might never have had the opportunity to sit around the same table are forced to be together in prison and, at best, learn to cooperate despite their disagreements in order to survive and defend their common rights. If these forms of cooperation continue after release, they can develop into networks of mutual trust and legal defense; networks that operate beyond ideological boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same logic, with differences, applies to the relationship between forces inside and outside the country. The differences in circumstances are real: someone living inside the country faces the risk of arrest, direct economic pressure, and practical restrictions every day; someone active outside the country enjoys greater relative security but faces other challenges, such as being distant from the pulse of society, fragmentation, and sometimes a lack of connection with a new generation of activists inside the country. Cooperation between these two positions becomes constructive and sustainable only when it is based on respect for each side\u2019s different experiences; on the independence of decision-making by forces inside the country, who take real risks, and on the supportive, rather than directive, role of forces outside the country. The history of Iranian opposition relations has shown that whenever this balance has been disrupted and forces outside the country have sought to assume the role of leading and determining the policies of forces inside the country, the result has been nothing but mistrust and division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left of the future will emerge neither through the mechanical reconstruction of traditional organizations of the past nor through sole reliance on completely informal networks. Social movements ((from workers\u2019 protests to women\u2019s, student, and environmental movements)) make the social necessity for change visible, but for continuity, preservation of collective memory, and gaining real bargaining power against the state and capital, they need organization. But this organization must emerge from the real needs of those movements themselves, rather than being imposed upon them from above and in advance; more importantly, it must not restrict the independence of the movements. An organization that becomes detached from the tangible and everyday demands of people does not generate trust and is gradually pushed to the margins; a network that remains entirely informal and without any lasting structure, meanwhile, cannot preserve accumulated experience and, with every generational change or wave of repression, is forced to start from zero. Therefore, the Left of the future must be able to establish a flexible, democratic, and accountable relationship between spontaneous movements and lasting organization; a relationship in which the organization serves the movement, not the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the historical and chronic weaknesses of the Iranian Left has been its distance from the tangible and concrete issues of people\u2019s everyday lives. Many theoretical debates on the Left, no matter how analytically precise, seem foreign and inaccessible to a worker worried about next month\u2019s rent or a teacher whose salary does not cover the cost of living. The Left of the future will acquire real meaning and function only when it stands alongside workers, women, students, teachers, retirees, and environmental activists and has a concrete program and action for their real problems: wages and job security, housing, healthcare, education, freedom, human dignity, gender equality, the right to independent organization, and environmental protection. This is not an abstract list; each of these issues is a living and everyday concern for millions of people in Iran today. A tangible demand builds trust; trust makes cooperation sustainable; sustained cooperation creates organization; and organization ultimately produces real social power. This chain cannot be started from the middle; without the first link “that is a tangible demand” none of the subsequent links will take shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most cases, people initially seek to improve their living conditions, not necessarily to fundamentally change the political and economic system. But whether a reformist demand ultimately leads to structural change or remains limited to that level depends on the balance of social forces, the capacity of existing institutions to absorb or suppress that demand, and the accumulated experience of movements. The task of the Left is neither to dismiss reforms on the grounds that they are \u201cnot enough,\u201d nor to continually promise a revolution whose horizon is unclear, but to assess each demand concretely and honestly: Does this demand build trust among people? Does it expand the scope of cooperation among different social groups? Does it increase the real capacity for organization? If the answer to these questions is yes, then that demand ((no matter how small or occupational it may appear on the surface)) acquires strategic importance and deserves serious support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left of the future, rather than expending its energy arguing over \u201cwho is truly left-wing\u201d and who is not ((a question that has often fueled sectarian competition and endless splits)) should focus on a more practical question: In the face of the real and specific problems of society, what are we doing? Supporting workers, women, students, teachers, environmental activists, and national and religious minorities can be a starting point for cooperation among forces that may have serious disagreements with one another over many theoretical, historical, or strategic issues. A clear and coherent political identity can be the result of accumulated shared experience in practical struggle, rather than a prerequisite that must be settled before any cooperation can take place. This does not mean ignoring theoretical disagreements; the Left of the future must be able to raise and discuss these differences transparently and democratically, but it must not allow theoretical debates to prevent joint action against tangible and immediate injustices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, the future of the Left will be determined neither in political meetings behind closed doors nor through attempts to reconstruct old organizations with the same structures and the same language of decades past. If a new Left is to emerge, its source will be nothing other than the real and ongoing lives of the people of Iran. The Left of the future is a current that learns from society rather than merely teaching society; a current that connects the scattered experiences of workers, women, teachers, students, and environmental activists; a current that builds democratic, transparent, and accountable forms of organization rather than closed hierarchies; a current that, instead of repeating the dogmas of the past, produces knowledge and defends its analysis while remaining prepared to revise it; a current that defends the rights and freedoms of all human beings, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or social position; and, most importantly, a current that tests its claims not through speeches and statements, but through real action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Left of the future, therefore, is not a current that speaks most about revolution or chants the most radical slogans. The Left of the future is a current that, within the real necessities of human life, works to change the existing world and, through this same daily and continuous effort ((in the factory, school, university, street, and even prison)) continually rebuilds and transforms itself. This Left is not the product of a founding statement or a founding congress; it is the product of thousands of small everyday experiences that, if properly connected, can become a real, rooted, and lasting social force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the Left in Iran is to once again become a social force, this path…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[33,24,10,30,8,11,185,187,186],"post_badge":[50,46],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-abroad-committee-of-the-communist-party-of-iran","tag-communist-party-of-iran","tag-cpi","tag-iran","tag-komala","tag-kurdistan","tag-left","tag-social-movement","tag-socialism","post_badge-analysis","post_badge-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3249,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions\/3249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_badge","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpiran.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_badge?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}