It is my belief that if we were to make a list of the most influential political and cultural figures of the last half century in southern Iran, and in particular Khuzestan, Mansur Khaksar would be there, somewhere near the top.
He belonged to that breed of intellectuals who lived their beliefs. He had a complex personality; he was both a poet and a critic. He explored and analysed cultural issues. He was also a political activist from the moment he knew himself.
We have been made familiar with Mansur Khaksar as a poet. We have read his poetry[1] and the admiring discourse it generated[2]. We also have portraits of his cultural and literary life, no matter how incomplete. But his political record was in the shadows when he was alive and remains firmly in the shadow one year after his death. The allusions to his politics have been in the margins of the critiques of his poetry: limited to finding the footprints of his political affiliations in his works.[3]
He was a socialist and remained a socialist until the end of his life. He belonged to that generation of fighters for whom defeats did not spell defeat, “bring them to their senses” or leave them resigned. In his trip to the Soviet Union he saw the hollowness of the socialist bloc model first hand, which only increased his revulsion for it and the parties who supported it. While many of his former comrades saw their beliefs collapse with the iron curtain, Mansur Khaksar retained his belief in a world based on freedom, equality and humanity. His ideals were not based on romantic dreams of a remote future, but in response to the burning needs of today. Don’t think he was a dreamer! He did not close his eyes to the limitations imposed by the realities of life and he could not excuse those who did, any more than he could excuse those who clung to their excuses for passivity.
Mansur Khaksar never looked beyond class when observing the world. He was born in Abadan, a city where industrial production had reached the zenith of its development and had attracted an important layer of advanced workers. He was raised in a working class family in a working class district, and his ties with the camp of labour were strong. He never broke with these ties. His knowledge of the labour force was from his own experience and not from a book. He was closely acquainted with the struggles of the workers throughout his life. He believed in their power and he knew their every strength and weakness. He always understood the importance of the class struggle. When he began to read Marx at the age of twenty, his own experience was redefined through his newfound understanding of the necessity, importance and potential of the agents of history: those who sell their labour power. From that point he recognised no substitute for workers in the construction and building of a new world. [4]
It was this background that influenced his political outlook for the remainder of his life. When in the first years after the revolution theories of the “non-capitalist road to socialism” and “epoch” were expressed by those from the Stalinist “Brezhnevist” camp, rendering the left almost paralytic, he was one of those who stood against them. He refused to accept that you have to call on the destitute masses to stand in line behind the ayatollahs, both of the turbaned and non-turbaned variety, in the name of the anti-imperialist struggle. Later too when those theories had lost their luster and been replaced by post-modernism, post-Marxism and the “end of history”, when neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism dominated the political spectrum and an entire army of “new-thinkers” saw it as their job to sell them, he gave them the contempt they deserved. He refused to accept that there was any potential for liberation in the new order being built. He did not accept that in the global village the ordinary men and women who labour and toil have to surrender to capital as their only road to salvation. And he never accepted that the only escape from hunger and destitution for those who have nothing to sell but their labour is a race to the rear.[5]
Mansur Khaksar’s views on political Islam did not need to wait for the establishment of the Islamic Republic to take shape. He never had any illusions as to the anti-democratic, demagogic and reactionary nature of the Islamist movements. Early on in the revolutionary tide he clearly recognised the danger posed by the efforts of Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters to ride on the back of popular rebellion in order to control it. When he and a handful of his comrades gathered in an association they named “from prison to exile” in the early months of 1978, one of their preoccupations was the danger threatening the peoples’ movement from this direction. In fact, it was this very concern that had driven Mansur Khaksar and his colleagues, Sa’id Soltanpour, Akbar Mirjani, Mehradad Pakbaz and Hamzeh Farahani to set up such an association.
After the collapse of the Pahlavi regime and the establishment of the Islamic government there were many who learnt painful lessons and came to oppose the new government. Groups and individuals, whose number constantly increased, joined the opposition, as they came to face repression at every turn. But the number of individuals or groups who opposed the previous regime, while still recognizing both the danger of a religious reaction before the fall of that regime and the utter necessity of standing against it, was tiny.[6] Whatever the real explanation for this inability, whether political opportunism or ideological failing, the outcome was the same: the formation and growth of a political arena that made it more difficult as each day passed to confront political Islam. There was an atmosphere where the least criticism or protest against demagoguery, the false accusations, or the domineering behaviour of the currents under the leadership of Khomeini, was said to split the “united anti-dictatorial front” and help “imperialism”, if not actually aid the CIA and Mossad.
Some will recall how, months before achieving power, Islamic groups made strenuous efforts to stifle the voice of radical and progressive currents. And wherever the latter were able to reveal the reactionary and counter-revolutionary nature of the Islamists, the response went beyond foul mouthing and sabotage and became actual physical repression. Significantly, and tragically, recourse to repression against political opponents was not confined to Islamist groups but extended to a large section of the political organisations of the time, including some on the left.
It is against this background that the importance and significance of the actions of Mansur Khaksar and his friends in setting up the ‘Committee from Prison to Exile’ is best understood. This Committee placed two tasks in front of itself: to struggle against the regime of the Shah and his supporters, while opposing religious reactionaries and the dangerous threat of their domination over the popular movement. The basis of the political discourse of this Committee in all the meetings it held and in all the campaigns it organised was precisely such viewpoints. In the six months the Committee was particularly active, there was scarcely a single important European city in which at least one large collective action was not organised. These were activities which many felt to be unprecedented in scope, scale, field of action, and extent of media coverage.
The Committee also published books and periodicals, discussing both political happenings and theory. They used these periodicals to disseminate their views and warn of the danger of the Islamist current. It has to be admitted that the share of Mansur Khaksar in realizing the efforts that took place in these fields was critical. He wrote incessantly. He compiled and published them anywhere suitable: from Ahmad Shamlu and Qolam-Hossein Sa’edi’s periodical iranshahr - in almost every issue of which one article by this group appeared - to pamphlets and leaflets on the stalls of political and student groups.
Among the articles written by Mansur during this period, one, the publication of which faced widespread opposition, was a detailed analysis of the nature, political and ideological trajectories and danger of the religious currents that “are registering our country in their name even before its earth has been relinquished [by the previous regime]”. This article was published as The Present Conditions of the Movement and the Maraje’ (religious leaderships) and signed ‘fighters in the new revolutionary movement of Iran’. It was one of the first studies that analysed the reactionary nature of the Islamist currents. In bold and undisguised language it painted the disturbing future that the dominance of these currents over the popular movement would lead to. The importance and sensitivity of this article becomes apparent when it is noted that it was the first direct response to the stance taken by Ayatollah Khomeini against left-leaning students in October 1978.
Pausing for a moment to reflect on the details of this period is not merely valuable as a reflection on this chapter in Mansur Khaksar’s life, but illustrates the importance of his actions in a historical context.
Firstly there was the inability of many to see the conservative, reactionary and despotic nature of political Islam, the monster that was growing out of the mass uprising and preparing to capture power. But this was not a ubiquitous failing, in the same way that the defeat of the revolution was not an inescapable destiny. It is true that a large section of the opponents of the shah (which extended from the extreme left across to the extreme right) saw this monster as a saving angel and for months shouldered its efforts and smoothed its road to power. But the appearance of the Committee from Prison to Exile[7] and the campaign it organised, demonstrated another possibility and perspective. It was the expression that the general uprising was not doomed to failure: the expression of the fact that the movement was not without either the theoretical capacity, political health or ethical courage to simultaneously confront the despotism in power and the one that was aiming to replace it. If it had not been wasted, and especially attacked by ‘insiders’, its effect on political events may have been different, and it could have potentially opened up a future that was not as dark and disastrous as the one we ultimately faced.
Secondly, ‘the left’ in its totality cannot be blamed for supporting Ayatollah Khomeini and the movement under his leadership. The confrontation of the progressive and radical left with political Islam had started months before the collapse of the Pahlavi regime[8]. It was so open and ferocious that the new rulers dished out death sentences for their opponents’ crimes. Of course, the real ‘crime’ of the poet Sai’d Soltanpour and many other intellectuals were their activities before the revolution. Sai’d Soltanpour was not condemned to death in June 1981 but in the early months of 1979: at a time when his writings and speeches referred to Ayatollah Khomeini and other leaders of the Islamists as a handful of demagogues thirsty for power, and their movement as anti-people, totalitarian and reactionary.[9]
Mansur Khaksar was a revolutionary fighter. He came out of the Fadai’ tradition and his emotional and ethical attachment to that tradition had been internalized. He had no time for those who challenged his human and social values. Yet in his personal relationships he was a paragon of patience, forgiveness and human emotions. While not a hero worshipper, he considered closing one’s eyes to heroic deeds to be a huge injustice. He had no time for adventurism and was persistent in its criticism, but he never accepted that such criticisms should serve the purposes of discrediting daring and sacrifice, and undervaluing non-submission and resistance. Most significantly, he was always a revolutionary without belonging to that crowd of revolutionaries who seek revolution only through the barrel of a gun. Except for a brief moment, he never put down the pen, and he never doubted the power of the word and the image.
Aside from political-cultural activities in the 1960s and the publication of honar va adabiyat dar jonub (Art and Literature in the south), or the years of exile and intensive cultural and literary work, even when in the first years after the revolution he accepted responsibility in the Southern Organisation of the Fadai’ Organisation as a professional Fadai’ cadre he never laid down the pen. He was one of the handful of cadre who insisted on the importance and necessity of organizing written literature and journalism from below- a journalism that liberates the pen from the clutches of the editors and never allows a half lie to be covered by a half truth. Mansur himself was a pioneer in this work. Amongst the tens of periodicals that appeared at this time, the two Arabic publications, Al-Kefah and Al-Nesal, had particular significance. Here it is useful to point out another element in the political views of Mansur Khaksar, which had an important echo in his political praxis: his views on the national question and the Arab-speaking people of his region.
His birthplace was not just a furnace where his class views were forged, but also a geography where he had the chance to observe ethnic oppression, cultural humiliation and national discrimination from close up. His city was not merely divided up between the hell of the workers’ neighbourhoods and the paradise of the upper-layer of white collar workers and managers. Even the hells and paradises of the city had their class divisions. In Braim district lived the high company functionaries and managers, and in Bavardeh district were found the lower levels of paradise, various levels of white collar employees. Ahmad Abad was the upper storey of hell: a neighbourhood with narrow small houses and enormous overcrowding, inhabited predominantly by non-Arab workers. Then there were the straw and tin townships that covered the salty and water-clogged lands stretching from the border of Abadan city to the banks of the Bahmanshir river. These provided a roof over the heads of day labourers and non-skilled seasonal peasants. It was a population mainly made up of Arabs. Mansur Khaksar learnt the meaning of double and multiple oppressions through this geography, and its accompanying history and culture. This was an education that did not let him rest while he was alive. The publication of Al-Kafah and Al-Nesal providing a real opportunity, letting him swallow the fury that was constricting his throat all those years.
These two periodicals gathered a large number of Arab political activists and progressive intellectuals around them and became a real tool for taking two simultaneous steps. Firstly, they confronted ideologies of racial supremacy, challenging the degrading preconceptions and clichés that targeted the disadvantaged Arab peoples (this culture was not confined to the middle layers of society but had tainted the mass of non-Arab workers as well).[10] Secondly, they opened up a new chapter on the issues surrounding the national question, its manifestation in the structure of power and its links with class and gender oppression. For the first time in the preceding decades, it was the mass of Arab labour force, the throng of unemployed and the hitherto forgotten masses who had found a voice.
It is also helpful to consider the way Mansur Khaksar looked at political organisation and political parties. He did not see them as a tool for fulfilling personal ambitions; a home for the politically homeless; a weapon at the service of sectarian squabbles; or a door to enter the game of power and sit alongside those at the top. He harboured little doubt of the necessity for a class-party organisation, but had no time for sect making, sectarian fights, or at the other extreme, withdrawing into a corner. He opposed premature schisms after every petty disagreement. Furthermore, he did not approve of the way membership and even professional cadres were deeply embedded in the culture of the left. For Mansur Khaksar, a political organisation was a means for moving into a society based on different foundations. He saw the organizational structure of a movement for social and political liberation as a basis for building the replacement political order. He could not accept that the foundation and culture of such a movement can be built on rejecting those very values that are supposed to become institutionalized in tomorrow’s social order.
It was through this worldview that Mansur Khaksar, while remaining for many years a member of an organisation that had sunk into co-operating with the Islamic Republic, did not even for one day have doubts regarding the needs to confront political Islam, religious reaction and the regime that rose out of the revolution. In all those years he not only refused to advertise the official position of the Fadai’ organisation, but all the while he was a member, he remained in the ranks of the opposing minority and did not miss any opportunity to challenge the deviations which dominated the organisation. As far as the top leadership were concerned, his fate was clear: to be sidelined politely. From the middle of 1979, he was removed from all the main organs of decision making and organisation. It was then less than a year until his membership was effectively put on hold. It was only after the split known as 16 Azar[11] that he was once again invited to become politically active. From this time until he permanently left party-political activity some years later, Mansur Khaksar had a relationship with the organisation full of ups and downs. It was a relationship coloured by emotional ties and breaks, and the political disillusions, narrow mindedness and ethical residues of the generation to which he belonged.
Now over three decades separates us from those times. Sa’id Soltapour, and Mehrdad Pakzad were executed alongside tens of thousands of others, and Mansur Khaksar too left us a year ago. Today neither the views that supported the Islamic regime nor the political line-ups are the same as three decades ago. Neither are the views regarding gender, ethnic, cultural or religious inequalities what they were. Today there are very few who would defend the structural models and the culture that dominated political organizations back then. Specific views in many fields have changed, of this there can be no doubt, but what has remained are some of the fundament beliefs that underlined them. And sadly the very same people who had a hand in creating the tragedy that has lasted 30 years in our country today have gone on to repeat history, perhaps in a different shape or form, and mostly in the opposite direction.
Surveying the conditions that are prevalent within the left, one cannot be optimistic that without a more serious shakeup in the views and behavior of the left, there will open up a society without oppression, despotism and exploitation. Under these circumstances one must sadly admit that Mansur Khaksar and his colleagues are sorely missed. For those who continue the struggle, the values left by him and many others have become a resource, a model and an encouragement. Let their memory remain solid and permanent in the history of the Iranian left.
Ardeshir
Mehrdad
March 2011
Translated by Mehdi Kia
[1] Thirteen collections of poetry including: ba an noqteh (With That Point) Los Angeles Summer 2008; ta in noqteh (till this spot) 2002; ansuye berehnegi (The Other Side of Nakedness) 2000; los angelesiha 1997; qasideh safari dar meh (the tale of a trip in the fog) 1992
[2] See for example Malihe Tarrehgol, I never thought of silence, Jong Zaman no 6, summer 2010 Majid Nafisi Individuality and a trip in the fog, a look at the poetry of Mansur Khaksar, Poetry and Politics and 24 other articles, 1993; Khosrow Davami, Lost between the grave and the moon, the dialogue of death in the poetry of Mansur Khaksar, Jong Zaman no 6 summer 2010.
[3] If the omission of his political life cannot entirely be ascribed to the current atmosphere of fleeing from politics that appear to dominate our cultural life, it would not be a mistake to see it as an injustice on a large part of political society
[4] The close identity and understanding of the working class, its limitations and potentials in both current and structural fields, was undoubtedly due to his close association with labour activists. His older brother Nasser, a well known socialist worker and organiser in the labour movements of the south, undoubtedly played a large part. The close relations that Mansur had with other activist workers such as Dai’ Parviz, Kamal Sai’di and Hassan Atrafeh played a major role in forming his views and motivations. See ‘Dai’ Parviz, a man belonging to the tribe of tortured workers’, Rahe Kargar periodical, no 165, Spring 2000.
[5] I believe the main reason Mansur Khaksar accepted my invitation to join the editorial board of Iran Bulletin was the same vision: seeing this publication moving along this same intellectual and political trajectory. Later when the issue of the focus of the publication came up, he agreed to widen the scope of activity of the paper and to change of its name to Middle East Left Forum. This was a decision which encouraged the joining of István Mészáros, Edward Said, Khalil Hindi, Bridget Fowler, Aziz al-Azmeh and a number of other prominent and progressive figures on the left.
[6] Among the groups and individuals who warned against the dangers facing the popular movement from the growth of the reactionary religious quarters I clearly recall the Sazman Vahdat Communisti (The Communist Unity Organisation) and the well known historian Khosrow Shakeri (Cosroe Chaqueri).
[7] Undoubtedly other
groups with similar aims and the campaigns were appearing at the time.
[8] There has been a long history of enmity and conflict between political Islam and the socialist and communist movement in Iran. It dates back to the formation of capitalist relations in the country and the class-cultural relations that accompany it.
[9] It should be recalled that the entire time the small caravan of From Prison to Exile was doing its European tour, conducting talks, gatherings and street demonstrations from city to city. A group several times its size followed its every step. These were activists in the Islamic Associations of various European countries specifically mobilised to disrupt these meetings and street demonstrations.
[10] This is serious issue with deep roots remaining to this day and acting as one of the means that create divisions among the working class of the region.
[11] December 7, 1981 when the Left Section (jenahe chap) of the Fadai’ majority officially split from the main organisation. The minority Fadai’ had previously split from the main organisation to leave the Fadai’ (majority) but many of those who opposed the leadership’s policy to support the Islamic regime stayed behind as the jenahe chap before splitting off.