Dear comrades,
I have the pleasure to address this congress a salute from the worker-communist initiative. I’d like to thanks Azar Majedi for inviting me, and would like to transmit salute form others comrades who couldn’t come today. I’m sorry I can’t speak in farsi, so I wrote in English to help a greater number of comrades to understand.
Worker-communist initiative is still a small group of dedicated activists. We founded in august, this year, and I think we can be proud of our work since the last six months, of our monthly paper entitled “worker-communism”, of our job in unions, strikes and meetings, of all what we did to set-up the bases of a worker-communist group in France and Belgium.
Worker-communism, as a movement of the working-class, is a world-wide product of the class struggle against the capital. As a defined current, worker-communism first established in Iran, but was never intended to be “middle-eastern”, but to express the needs of the class itself.
Reading Mansoor Hekmat’s writings closely, as far as they have been translated in English and other European languages, show many, many examples he always had in mind the fact that, soon or less, worker-communist parties will rise in western countries, in Europe and in America. Building such worker-communist circles in various countries of Europe is a first step toward a party.
He quotes more than often facts, situations and issues which fits the political needs of the communist movement in these countries, about unions, parliament, democracy, workers movement and so on. I hope a first volume of Mansoor Hekmat’s writings, currently in translation by a group of comrades, will be published in French by the end of March.
It is very important to understand, and then to make known, that worker-communism is not just a specialized branch of Marxism designed for middle-eastern issues, a Marxist criticism of political Islam. This is exactly what most western leftists and secularists want to do: use worker-communists and its well-know figures for their own inner debates, but refuse to consider it seriously for themselves. Now, it’s time for worker-communism to land in western countries, to set up as a communist answer to the western working-class issues.
From at least ten years now, activists born in Europe have been involved with the worker-communist parties. Just to speak about myself, it’s eight years now I discovered Mansoor Hekmat’s thought and writings, and been active along with worker-communist comrades.
For a long time, the main task we had was to fight against the so-called “islamoleftism” within the left movement, rising key issues about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and so on, from a working-class and women movement point of view. I think we had an impact, limited but real, on the debates on these subjects.
Fighting the influence of political Islam within the left is an important task, and we’re proud to do it. But that’s not enough for communists. We’re not only a secular movement, nor even a secular tendency within the left, but working-class communist activists.
Our aim is not a secular, republican, state, but a stateless, classless communist society. That’s why we needed to move forward, we needed to build the first bases for a worker-communist organization in the country we live. This is a task we couldn’t delay anymore.
This will be a long process, from the group to the party. We know that and it don’t scare us. The ongoing events in the class struggle, both in Europe and Middle-East, may affect this process positively, so we have good reasons to hope it will be a success, and it’s an encouragement to work hard for it. Probably this process could start as well, under different conditions, in other countries of Europe.
Thanks again for inviting me and for listening.
I hope your congress we’ll be successful.
