Mustafa Shu‘a‘iyan and Fada'iyan-i Khalq: Frontal Politics,Stalinism, and the Role of Intellectuals in Iran

This paper presents a glance into the life and times of the forgotten Iranian revolutionary and political theorist, Mustafa Shu‘a‘iyan, and his engagement with the orthodox and militant Iranian Left of the 1970s. A brief biographical sketch situates Shu‘a‘iyan in the context of the leftist groups of his time. In particular, the paper shows how upon his agonizing organizational relationship with the People's Fada'i Guerrillas, he set himself the unenviable task of launching the pathology of Stalinism that dominated the Iranian Left for decades. In this context, his bitter debate with the Fada'i Guerrillas on the role of the intellectuals in revolutionary struggle appears as a step toward unravelling the plagues that have won the Iranian Left its ill repute of being ideologically and organizationally undemocratic.     

Linkages of oil and politics: oil strikes and dual power in the Iranian revolution

ABSTRACT

Looking at the oil strikes during the Iranian revolution (1978–79), this article challenges dominant narratives of the relationship between oil and politics and the processes that shaped the outcome of the revolution. The main arguments of the article are developed in a critical dialogue with Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy. Firstly, the article argues that the scale of the oil strikes and their central role in the creation of organs of revolutionary power call into question the generalization about the material characteristics of oil that supposedly prevented mobilization. Secondly, the article argues that the fact that oil workers were able to organize mass strikes, but failed to create an independent organization, calls for an explanatory approach that combines material factors with the role of consciousness, ideology and organization. This leads to a rereading of the Iranian revolution that highlights the essential role of the oil strikes in the emergence of dual power in early 1979, and the contingency of their outcome.