Ardeshir Mehrdad: I would like to start with a few key issues. You are known as one of the scholars, or at least theoretical exponents of the “Islamic revolution”. What do you understand by this concept? What transformation would you call a “revolution” and which revolution would you call Islamic? In your view for which people, and in answer to which issues, is an Islamic revolution a necessity?
Abolhassan Bani Sadr: The word revolution is the history of the last century in Iran. For half a century of this I have pondered, acted and argued over what is a revolution. Over that same period the word revolution has been the subject of splits and convergence amongst Iranian groups, even those who called themselves revolutionary.
When after a century you still ask the meaning of revolution, your question expresses the reality that during those 100 years intellectual currents could not take root in Iran. The result is that a vague term continues to used in order to justify this or that policy. Is it not true that over the last four years in Iran, for many circles reformism has become equated with non-violence? And to justify their own positions the same circles equate revolutions with violence?
Despite this I thank you for your question as an attempt to encourage thought processed. Can I start by saying that from August 1953 [1] I became a republican. At the time I considered myself a revolutionary for this stance. In the following years, when once again new waves emerged, there were four main currents on the Iranian political scene:
1. One which gave priority to freedom, in the same meaning it has in liberalism.
2. One current, which was in power, gave priority to growth and modernism. And the Pahlavi despotism got its legitimacy from that.
3. A tendency which gave priority to “social revolution” (equals a change in the structure of society).
4. One which gave priority to Islam.
By the time the Shah was putting into practice his “White Revolution” [2], the first three had been defeated.
a). In those years the question was how to escape that cul-de-sac. That dead end was that the “priorities” were irreconcilable. My attention to negative equilibrium was the result of years of study of revolutions, theories on “what is revolution?”. My efforts was to solve the issue of reconciling freedom, independence and growth as measured by justice and Islam. So to answer your question as to what development I call revolution: Duality is the guiding principle of power-centred systems. To replace it with negative equilibrium is revolution.
Let me explain. There is no power in being as such. Power is created by living things, in the relationship of the forces they create between one another. Is moving from one power to another a revolution? In political sociology the answer is yes. The evolution from power in its feudal to its capitalist form was called a bourgeois revolution. There are not a few who give power such adjectives as totalitarian, dictatorial, liberal, democratic, popular.
For me, power has no existence in itself. It gets its being – I repeat – from the relationship of forces. Change in form is not the same as change in essence. Therefore the passage of power from one class to another cannot be called a revolution. Revolution is getting away from a relationship where humans are alienated from themselves. In other words, forget their own freedom. A return to freedom, that is revolution.
We know that the first definition of revolution, is to rediscover one’s original identity. In religion this revolution becomes the return to innateness and in Marxism a rediscovery of the original society, naturally through sending history off on a path of dialectic conflict (movement) at the end of which humanity finds its universality and freedom. In this way dialectic came to be used to open a cycle, considered revolution, which culminates in a human society free of classes and contradictions. The difference between the two understandings of revolution could itself be the subject of an interesting debate. One could ask: does dialectic make a religious approach scientific? One could ask….
But the abolition of power, as the long-term culmination of the revolutionary process, while seeming to have a common element, holds a fundamental difference too. In the real world, power does not abolish itself, either through dialectic movement, or linear movement, or an Aristotelian definition of movement, or … The elimination of power is a process that is achievable through the broadening of freedoms form the very beginning.
The ideas which guided the Iranian revolution were the principles of freedom, independence and progress, with Islam as their interpretation and the opening up of the moral space and the expanse of non-coercion, on the principles of negative equilibrium. They dispensed with such issues as what should precede what, allowing a collective movement that made the flower victorious over the gun. You can well imagine that if on this understanding of revolution, the bureaucracy, the army, the government, other political, religious, economic, social, educational, and cultural institutions had changed structure and in that initial step were people-led democracy – something that I implemented in the army and the treasury – what the condition our country would be today.
b). Thus if revolution is the rediscovery of freedom and through this a return from the false road of power creation and using it for destruction, then the Islamic revolution is a return form the expression of power to an expression of freedom.
If at the time we did not know the experience of the Soviet Union, we had the experienced our own country. In the 1905 “Constitutional Revolution”, in the movement for nationalisation of oil (1950’s) and in the uprising of June 1962 [3] a section of the clergy and religious expression had the leading role. The defeat of those experiences faced us with the question: how can religion and the clergy play two opposing roles? This question led us to research, and the conclusion that `two expressions of religion have come to be applied to two conflicting conclusions. One, the result of religious modernism and its adaptation to western popular sovereignty, came to the aid of the Constitutional Revolution and the oil nationalisation movement. After “victory”, however, in the power structure the expression of the old power (traditional religion) dominated the field. The mistake was that religious modernism continued to kept religion as the expression of power and still saw power as a thing of value.
That is why we faced the question: is religion an expression of freedom which has become alienated through expressing power? Or is it, as Foucault claims, like all expressions, the expression of power? If it is the latter, and there are no expressions of freedom, then freedom does not exist either. But if power rises from the relationship of forces and without this relationship has no independent existence, then freedom exists. If freedom exists, then the expression of freedom exists too.
Nothing but religion can put forward the expression of freedom. This is because freedom without god, acquires that same definition that liberalism has given it (the power of the individual within their own limits). It can discover no other definition.
Moreover, non existence of god, it is equivalent to determination, and determination is the relation between power and force. In this way, for all people and for all times, religious expression can only be an expression of freedom. To rediscover this expression was, and is, exceedingly difficult. Yet this is an issue over which the freedom of human beings is hostage, especially the Muslim individual who is in the grip of despotism and the growth of underdevelopment.
c. I have already alluded to the experience of Russia under communist rule, there for everyone to see today. Religion was not destroyed. It merely stagnated rather than being renovated. In the Islamic communities everyday there is talk of different readings of Islam. But seeing that censorship operates, and the flow of thought does not, these communities remain in deep ambiguity. In reality there are only two expressions. One is the expression of power and the other of freedom.
To inform society of the expression of freedom, is not just a task for the Muslim who is conscious of the expression of freedom, but one for all those who see freedom as the solution to the difficult problems of these communities. The establishment of popular sovereignty is subject to this revolution. The persistence of such sovereignty and its evolution to one relying on the principle of participation also needs this revolution. This relates to the role religion has in the expression of freedom and to open the orbit of human thought and action in making brotherhood and equality as something of value and removing power (= force) as something laudable. Also because of its role in the republican guardianship of the people (participation in leadership according to equality, brotherhood and co-operation) and human rights. And finally because the new value system based on freedom replaces the value system (in reality dys-value system) orbiting power, replaces power-centred reason with free reason. The reason of modernity failed because it remained in the orbit of power-based reason. Reason becomes modernity when freedom orbits reason. This development is revolution.
Thus not only our society, but all societies need the new spirituality, the expression of freedom. This need has to be realised immediately if you consider how much our living environment and humans have been destroyed by the rule of capital and other rules twined to it.
In the 1979 revolution when our hopes and deeds was to have an Islamic revolution, for the first time in contemporary Iranian history a coup took place by power-oriented religious players against the tendency that had found in revolution the expression of freedom. The coup of June 1981, however, was different from the two previous coups. Even now it is these two religious expressions that will determine the future direction of Iran today, and tomorrow.
Yesterday the tendency supporting this or that expression of power (religious or non-religious) deserted those supporting freedom. Today’s power worshipers try to keep everyone in the closed orbit of power (= force). We must break this orbit and free oneself from it. All responsible and free human beings must rise to this challenge. To establish the flow of thought, information, and to break open that circuit, every time the power-worshipers close it by force, is the cherished efforts of any free-living human. Whoever gives authenticity to power becomes its tool. A society that gives authenticity to power (= force) will be ruled by the power-orientated. Therefore, the issue is not for tomorrow. It is an issue for today. We must change to change.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: What you say on the “Islamic revolution” calls for many questions. But in order not to unfocus the argument I will bypass many of these and return to those which directly follow my first question. I think to concentrate on two issues would be useful and elucidate your views better. “Freedom” and “power”. You define “revolution” and also the “Islamic revolution” as a return from “the expression of power” to the “expression of freedom”. Without knowing what freedom or power is understood in the framework of your thinking it is difficult to understand the Islamic revolution, and its necessity.
The way I understand it you see freedom as a return to the inner self and conquering alienation. What does this inner self mean? Is it, as you have hinted, the same as innateness? If so, on what criteria can one see human innateness as something singular and fixed rather than changeable and changing? Moreover, even if one claims that human innate nature is singular and fixed for all time, we must still ask which authority can recognise and define it? Why should this fixed and singular innateness necessarily be religious? And why is this religion necessarily Islam? In your view, is a thought that assumes a single and unchanging innateness for humankind immune from falling into absolutism and all its political repercussions.
Abolhasan Bani Sadr: You misunderstood my definition. Freedom is not a return to inner self. Unless we say that freedom and the rights humans have are innate to their existence. Are indestructible. Cannot be given or taken back. Only humans ignore them when becoming power-centred. Humans are a sum of talents and human life is a sum of rights. If they ignore any of these rights, part of their life is ruined. Therefore innateness equals life when it is free with all its innate collection of rights. This innateness is not religious. It is religion that can be the religion of innateness. It is ideology that can, or cannot be, the ideology of innateness. Every religion or ideology becomes the religion or ideology of innateness when the style of living enjoys freedom and other innate human rights.
This human being spontaneously seeks growth. Growth always flows through freedom. Therefore, if what you mean by “on what criteria humans have a singular and fixed innateness” is that the innate human will remain what they were – or as Plato said change is equal to corruption - then the command written inside your question comes from the same power-bound thought and it is from that angle that the question to me is based. Free humans grow, and growth has no limits. To ignore freedom and innate rights of life, takes mankind to the byway of ruin. In practice, humans both grow and destroy, are in fetrat and come out of fetrat.
b). It is clear that fetrat is not religious, and if life’s fetrat was not in lieu of all rights, there would be no ideology or religion. Attention to this is very important – which power-centred reason usually ignores – and in the absence of freedom and the innate rights of life, even if in the unlikely event life existed, religion and ideology – even ideologies which deny freedom and rights of humans – would not exist. Therefore religion is not necessarily Islam. Every religion or ideology is either the expression of freedom, or is the expression of power. Just as the expressions of power have the same fundamental nature and their differences are superficial, the expressions of freedom too have the same essence.
c). The perspective that you presented in the form of your questions have no relation to my views. I also did not see the relation between the questions and “absolutism”. Because even if religious innateness, which is meaningless, were only in Islam, if it is expressing power, it is ESTESLAM?? and anti innateness, and if it is an expression of freedom it becomes a life-style enjoying human rights or the means of becoming free from power. It cannot, therefore, be totalitarian power.
d). But I defined freedom, before this on two occasions, as a relationship other than a relation of forces. In the past, they thought (even in physics) that all relationships are between the definite determinations, and therefore a relation of forces. But now, a relationship between the determinations? And the indeterminate indefinite had entered scientific thought and become acceptable. As I explained, if innateness (as I have defined it) did not exist, expression too, whether of freedom or of power, would not have come into being. Therefore before it turned into scientific thought, it was known that if we do not want to repeat the work of liberalism, which is the same as the work of Plato – keep the word and change its meaning – we must say unambiguously that without the relationship between the definite and indefinite, freedom cannot even be imagined.
Now to you question on “freedoms highlighted by liberalism”: liberalism defines freedom as power in the realm of the individual. “The freedom of everyone stops where the freedom of another begins”. But the limit is set by power relations, where strength becomes force and a relationship of domination is fashioned, and hence a negation of freedom. Therefore in this definition freedom becomes its opposite. Although from the perspective of liberalism power equals ability, and ownership the commanding position, but in practice it is power (= force) that acquires authenticity and becomes the focus of activity.
To understand the inversion of meaning well, we can say that the learning of a science by someone does not produce a barrier between themselves and another, nor loving, or serving, or dispensing justice. Only one relationship creates limits and that is the relationship of power. In this relationship a person does not create the limits of their “freedom”. It is determined by the balance of power. It is for this reason that a worker’s “freedom” is crystallised in the sale of their labour power while “freedom” of a super-national firm covers the whole world and a large expanse of time (= the future).
In any case, the relationship between the definite and indefinite is not a power relation. Therefore if two people create a relationship through a relationship with an indeterminate, their relationship will be without force and will be free (non-coercive = absence of power). Therefore to simplify existence in the determinate existence is inevitably to affirm power and to give it authenticity: the conflict of power with god. On the other hand, one can imagine a huge catastrophe for societies where religion as an expression of freedom becomes so alienated from itself through the expression of power that god becomes absolute power (= force), and the relationship of humans with god becomes a relationship with absolute power. This tragedy has taken place. For this reason Marcel Guchet (?) in Religion and Democracy quoting those seeking freedom, sees freedom as the solution of the contradiction between man and god.
Those who went so far as to deny god in order to solve the contradiction knew that the determinate existence cannot but believe in compulsion. From these, philosophers tried to open a way from compulsion to freedom. They believed this road to be dialectics. Steering clear of the debate on the rights and wrongs of dialectics, we see two realities. First, that dialectics needs the indeterminate at the beginning, in the process of conflict and at the end. And again that the negation of creative compulsion (= necessity) in freedom, is the negation of the determinate in the indeterminate. In other words, the negation of “creative compulsion” is within dialectics itself. But creative compulsion to freedom and force does not open the way to the absence of force. To be free at the end of the process, particularly from creative compulsion to freedom, is to make return to personal freedom impossible. The innate freedom of existence is part of the life of humans. It is for humans not to neglect their freedom, and the conscience to freedom, is through creating a link to god.
I think it opportune to speak of a book
Roger Garaudy wrote in the days he was a Marxist philosopher. In Marxist Humanism, he criticises, amongst
others the views of Sartre on freedom: Sartre’s views included the acceptance
of god. Because “his freedom had all the divine qualities”. In the final page
of his book Sartre wrote: “to be human is a inclination to become god”, “humans
are creatures that plan and carry through the programme of their divinity”. And
“humans are always outside themselves moving towards
…”. After these quotations Garaudy gives us a Marxist definition of
freedom: “freedom, to which the specific contradictions
of intelligent creatures expresses itself, is the negativity of each creature
at the level of understanding to their growth” [sic] and “freedom is not the mechanical “resultant” of complicated
human relations that make up the individual, nor the simple mechanical
‘reaction’ of these relations in the understanding of the individual. Freedom
is the creation with a different quality of this social relations and the
understanding that we have of it … therefore the highest level of freedom that
an individual reaches, is a time that they gain the clearest consciousness of
the contradictions of their age and use the most effective tools for solve
them. As we can see choice is free to the extent that it is necessary.
Therefore individual is the centre of creation without being a centre of the
indeterminate.”
It is obvious that to become aware of the contradictions – even assuming that is a definition of freedom – and also to create a qualitatively different social relations and our understanding of them (that same issue of the transformation of quantity into quality and transmutation) poses the question that if according to Marx “the human submitting to non-human logic is a force that he himself has created and become its slave”, under what miracle of creative force (= necessity) will he become aware of the contradictions? If thought cannot free itself from the grip of forces, where can it become conscious of their contradiction with his free existence? If he performs this miracle by jumping from quantitative to qualitative changes, not only are these changes not the work of thought (they are the work of creative necessity in its polemical travels), even for the intellect to become aware of them it needs prior consciousness about the existence of contradictions and the law of mutation. Garaudy has written about the laws of the power-centred reason, without knowing that the power-centred reason begins with destruction, with that the self created destructiveness.
Indeed his writing, uncovers the most clear understanding of the contradictions of his age, when he admits the fact that this perception without the prior freedom of reason is an impossibility. In reality he could not write “contradictions inform reason of its own existence and tell it what the best means of solving them are” (and there are not a few those who believes in this). Because this would leave little room to counterpoise a Marxist interpretation of freedom to that of Sartre. But to accept the prior freedom of humans is to accept the ability of reason to exit determination and create the only relationship not dependent on force. Moreover, solving contradictions, is ultimately to be freed of the relation between the determinates?
I should remind you here that before Garaudy turned to Islam, and after he had published his green book on Islam, as a consequence of a learned discussion he obtained and read the guiding principles of Islam. In that discussion he accepted that there is no reason for the dialectic nature of the dialectics of contradiction – the critic of Gurovitch – and secondly it does not open up to freedom. All the same, if through carelessness we name the escape from the determinate freedom, the free space is that same expanse of non-coercion. But when freedom is the innate to existence, and existence is without end, how does one define without end? To have consciousness of something, say the contradictions Garaudy had in mind, reason needs to have a grasp on that thing. One cannot grasp the infinite. Thus one cannot limit freedom in the name of “religion”, since to limit is to negate freedom.
Those who do so, in expressing power alienate religion and limit freedom even more than liberalism. Indeed liberalism views freedom as a sum of ability and power (= force). When religion is expressed as power, human abilities are excluded. Because to accept these abilities, is also to accept their ability to lead, and this is incompatible with the absolute rule of the velayate faqih [4]. Freedom is only expressed through power and power is diminished through recklessness. If we were to claim that freedom is the divinity of humans, have we solved the problem of freedom? Let me remind you in passing that, apparently in Iran someone said freedom has a priority to religion. This incensed Mr Hassani, the Friday Prayer Imam [5] in Urumieh and he led the slogan “death to freedom!” This ignoramus does not realise that God is freedom and he had said death to God!
The debate comes to the question around Sartre’s decree “the project of the divine nature of man”. The answer to this question once again return us to the innate human. We will add to what we have said before that this human is a collection of talents too. And if they do not neglect to be with him in god, and the freedom of existence is with him in god [?]. The difference between “being god” and “being with him in god” is that if humans do not neglect their innateness, their growth will expand till infinity, till god. But he is never god. And if he speaks as if he is, he is a Pharaoh and will lose his freedom, will become identical to absolute power, and will reach a state where he will see himself as the absolute velayat and claim that “one can temporarily suspend towhid (divine unity)” and send God on a vacation [6].
So that humans know “with him in god but he is not god” it is up to him to know that the expression of power has a guiding principle. The expression of freedom too has a guiding principle. The guiding principle of all-embracing power is uni-pivotal duality. The dominant pivot has absolute authority and the dominated pivot is absolutely submissive.
The guiding principle of the expression of “liberal” power is bi-pivotal duality. Both sides in the power relations accept each other as dynamic. Each gives the individual, which is no other than themselves, authenticity. But they also accept each other’s existence. The become active and passive reciprocally.
The guiding principle of expression of freedom is negative equilibrium: it rejects the relation and balance of power. It recognises that same unforced relation as the basis of all other relations. Since it does not accept the pivots corresponding to power, it does not constrain the sphere of reason in the straightjacket of one pivot or lose it in the gap between two pivots. It released reason in the breadth of non-coercion to see everything as it is so that …
On this principle reason rediscovers its total creativity. In the moment of creation, without becoming god it becomes one with existence. That indefinable freedom, which comes to the view of reason at the moment of creation, and that indescribable pleasure that comes to the view of reason in the moment of creation, and that indescribable joy that in the moment of creation and the moments that follow strike humans is through of the ability of reason to see this freedom.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: if the expression of freedom is not confined to religious expression, let alone Islamic expression, why does the passage from the expression of power to the expression of freedom need an “Islamic revolution”?
Bani Sadr: I will remind you that you asked of the Islamic revolution. Obviously if the question was from a Christian or any other country the answer would have been that revolution is a return from the expression of power to the expression of freedom on condition that the religion or the ideology of the people had not [?] become alienated in the expression of power.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: in order to bring the discussion back to earth could you tell us what is the place of individual freedom in your definition of freedom, and what is its importance?
Bani Sadr: I will take advantage of your question to rewrite the list I made on freedoms in my study “What is growth?”
a. Freedom of choice is the guiding principle that each person, and only that person, selects. Since it is internal to them and cannot be imposed from outside.
b. Freedom is equivalent to the expanse of non-coercion. If all humans are free, their social milieu becomes the expanse of non-coercion. Even when the social-military centre is power and oppresses the social space, no power can limit anyone’s thought space from outside. Therefore no one has the right to use the presence of despotism as an excuse for disregarding their freedom and responsibility.
c. The freedom to chose information, knowledge, views, and expressions which (religion or ideology, freedom or power) are also internal and cannot be imposed from outside.
d. The freedom to think (recognise, understand, learn, and…) which remains internal and no one can be denied it from outside
e. Since any thought is a new creation, freedom which is seen occasionally as creation is also internal to humans.
f. Leadership. Part of this leadership cannot be reined in from outside. However another part, that which relates to the relations between humans, is. Since velayat is part of the peoples republic, each individual has equal rights to administer their society. It was the institution of this freedom which was the aim of the Islamic revolution: the liberation of Iranian society from any velayat (by taking out its meaning ad making it equal to absolute power over people) whether of shah, sheikh, new-form of party etc…
g. Freedom – which in the west is known as negative freedom – of expression, pen, assembly, marriage, home … (I have already mentioned religion and belief).
h. Freedom in the sense of humans being able to enjoy all their rights, in addition to the harmonious pursuit of their six talents in the process of growth. It is to this freedom that humans become members of a true society.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: considering the freedom of religion and belief, does this include the freedom to propaganda and agitation? And do believers of all religions and ideologies have the right to this freedom equally? Would you defend such freedom for say the Bahai or the irreligious or …?
Bani Sadr: The Qur’an has as answer for this where it says “good tidings on those who listen to the word and choose the best”. I will remind you that in the time of the Shah, in order to confront the worship of force, and to defend freedom of speech I sold the Tudeh Party publications and during the revolution I supported the freedom of all. A person who speaks the truth, why have fear of the freedom of expression of those who speak untruth? Those who censor speak untruth and worship force.
Ardeshir Mehrdad: when there is an official religion can one establish equality between religions and various ideologies? Is not a separation of religion and state a pre-requisite for the emergence of equal citizens?
Bani Sadr: I will remind you again that my government proposed a separation of religion and also ideologies from the state. Among the reasons was that religion is the expression of freedom and the state remains that of power.
AM:
In enjoying the personal and political freedoms that you counted, do you see a
total and all-embracing freedom between men and women as an essential
principle? In a society based on “brotherhood” can one hope to get complete
“equality” between men and women?
Bani Sadr: change the society based on “brotherhood” into one based on brother-sisterhood! [7]. Do you think “brotherhood” equals inequality between men and women? Women have many virtues, including the virtue of artistry which without freedom will be sterile. We must work more on the freedom of women.
AM:
On the issue of individual and private freedoms, what limitations do you
consider necessary? Specifically what are you views on the freedom to dress,
freedom of sex, and the freedom to chose non-traditional, “non-sharia’” forms of
families which these days in many modern societies have become social and
political issues of the day?
Bani Sadr: I have provided detailed answers to your question in my book “women and marriage”. As I explained freedom has no limits. Any limit is a negation of freedom. Therefore sexual freedom is that freedom that does not place sex as a means of producing a relation of power, and its measure is love.
AM: what about political freedoms? Do you have any limitations there or do you see these freedoms as being totally unrestricted?
Bani Sadr: I repeat that freedoms have no limits. Limits come from force. Therefore, in the realm of politics free activity is one devoid of force and also to resist the power-centred.
AM: can I specifically ask, your views on the right of nationalities? Do you defend the right of nationalities in Iran to determine their own fate? If to defend self-determination you come into conflict with the defence of the territorial integrity of our country, in whose favour should the conflict be resolved?
Bani Sadr: On principle every human is self-determining. Every ethnic group too. Despite this once you remove the element of force, in the way that force is either used in the name of “nationality” or “inviolable national borders”, there will be no conflict between inviolable national borders and the right to self-determination. The logic behind accepting the existence of contradiction is to consent to the presence of force and power. Force has to be removed.
If in the absence of force, an ethnic group chooses being alone rather than sharing and co-operation in the building of a freedom culture, we must respect its right to choose. Naturally the condition is that we stand up firmly to whichever group that imposes itself as the guardian of an ethnic group through the force of arms, and to acknowledge our homeland as belonging to, and the right of all. An individual cannot even close down a small company without considering the rights of others in that company, how can we ignore the rights of other people in our homeland? Since when have rights become one way?
Therefore, those who have together made a homeland and a culture, that homeland belongs to them all and on the principle of freedom, and not only contradiction, even small nuisances will not hold back custody over destiny and national borders. If it comes it is the result of force and force has to be abolished.
AM:
let us move to the meaning of “power”. How do you define this?
Bani Sadr: let my first emphasise that there was no power before relations. Human beings create power in their relationships. Yet they look on it as if on a riddle. Therefore for a human being to know what power is, and to realise that they create it and have made themselves its slave, we will chose a definition that is palpable for everyone and capable of being experienced:
In the existence of the determinates all but one relationship is a relationship of power. Between determinates energy creates relationships. Without energy, no relationship is created. Since friction is never zero, every relationship is also a relationship of force. That is it is accompanied by confrontation. Therefore in every relationship at least part of the force becomes alienated through force. This force is power.
For example an economic view claims that money is a neutral agent. It enters a transaction in order to make an exchange. What this ignores is that money is neutral before the transaction. But this neuter, becomes power the moment the relationship is that of superiority of hard cash, is one aspect among many facets of this power. Otherwise, there are other aspects that give money the ability to create a relation of power at every opportunity and everywhere. Even if both sides enter and leave this relationship with equal weight, it remains a relation of domination. This is because both sides become dependent and variables of one another. Thus, power comes from a relationship of dominance and gives these relationship durability. The form it takes may be different, but the content is always the same, and that is force.
Many believe that power is the result of relation of forces (like money, position, political position and such like, and military power … ). In fact this outcome cannot be considered power, unless it creates the relation of power. Toffler recognises a source and components for power, and sees is at a collection of wealth, knowledge and force. Even he admits that if it is related to the components, there are also other components Knowledge plays no role, until in the relation of forces it turns it to the advantage of the person who has that knowledge. As I described, either through passing knowledgeable over to the ignorant science creates a relation between the two, or it is used to create a force so that the knowledgeable can dominate the ignorant.
Here an important question has to be answered. Does knowledge automatically provoke the learned to dominate another? We know that the relationship of dominance requires legitimacy, legitimacy comes from belief, and belief comes from religion and ideology. Therefore without the expression of power, there is no power. The power-centred reason does not understand this reality. Neither the question nor the answer becomes real for this reason.
But free reason poses the question and finds the answer. It comes to the conclusion that science does not create a power relationship between the dominator and the dominated. But the expression of power allows science to be used in the creation of power. For this reason, nothing is more important than to free humans from the expression of power. So if the expression of freedom becomes alienated in the expression of power, and if society had become addicted to the expression of power in one form or another, the necessary act is to transform that form of the expression of power to that of the expression of freedom.
What is more apparent today than ever, and was not so obvious before, is that it is not easy to change beliefs speedily, while science advances rapidly. The expression of power minus belief is useless. For this reason it remains fettered to belief. Therefore any expression of power is against the growth of science. It was so in the past too. The contradiction between the past, the presence and the future comes to being thus, and in our country this contradiction is fatally obvious.
AM:
In the framework of the points you made, where is your direct pointer to
political power?
Bani Sadr: Every social reality has four dimensions: political, economic, social, and cultural. Although every real issue becomes more expressive in one of these dimensions. For example money as a real issue, is more expressive in the economic dimension. But if you want to recognise its role as power in Iranian society today, you must unavoidably recognise its political, social and cultural dimensions, or else even in the economic dimension its role will be mystified. On this logic, political power is a form of power more expressive in the political dimension. For example the “Leader” in the regime of mullataria [8], or in a political organisation, is the instrument of instituting relationships known as political relations. Depending on the interactions of relations, the power of the leader is realised. Despite this, without identifying the other dimensions, the place and position of the leader in the power relation cannot be clearly identified. For this reason I use power, wherever possible, without adjective, and wherever I give it an adjective, it is to highlight the fact that I am focusing on one of the dimensions of social reality.
AM: what relationship do you see between the concept of power and the state? When there is talk of abolition of power what will happen to the state and other political institutions?
Bani Sadr: I will remind you that for Foucault if one person creates a relationship of power with a society, he describes that power force. For example when Mr Khomeini said if 35 million say yes I will say no, this became pure force! But when society creates a relation of force with an individual, that is uses force against him or her, according to him was are dealing with power.
The state, at least when it is democratic, represents society and uses power in the name of society. In any case to differentiate force from power is superficial. In reality a relationship is created where energy becomes alienated in force and is used for destructive purposes.
And if we say that the state is the resultant of the relation of forces within a society and between that society and others, then inevitably it has to organise and use force. We know that Marxism sees the state as a means whereby one class dominates another. But in addition to using power, the state plays other roles. In reality the state is a self-alienated imamat [9].
The term imamat should not bring to mind for you the meaning given to it in religion as the expression of power. Imamat is the organisation of the leadership of society with the participation of all the members of that society. It is that unique relationship that is not a relationship of power. Therefore in the infinite the abolition of power means rediscovering this form of organisation not in need of power. I will set this imamat in infinity since it acts as a compass for a society that wants to become free and organise the state in such a way that it does not just have a role, or act, in a relationship of domination.
Does the above description clarify the role of the state and other political foundation (you called them institutions)? No, because in reality it is society that has to evolve before the role of the state and political foundations becomes clear, and not the other way round. Therefore, to target the conquest of power (= the state) is a mistake that our society and others who moved with this aim have made. And they paid a heavy price for this.
Experience teaches us that we should aim for freedom, and it is in society that this aim must be realised. If the Iranian community abroad had done this, and Iranians had been freed of the vicious circuit of violence and destruction of one another by any means, it is possible that in line with the law of communicating vessels our young society inside our borders would also see the solution in changing itself. It would change and effect change. If we assume that our society strives for freedom, changes and effects change, then the task of the state and the political foundations will become the realisation of the aims of the Islamic revolution in Iran: freedom, independence and growth in line with social justice and the rediscovering the expression of freedom.
AM: You emphasised that the role of the state is not confined to the reproduction and securing the domination of one class on another. Of course in my understanding of the Marxist theory of the state, when it describes the role of the state in the general conditions for social reproduction, its role is not confined to class domination. Leaving this aside, is such an emphasis enough to conclude that one can organise a form of state (which in all situations is an institution separate and above society) that is free of relations of domination and is not constrained by the limits of the relation of forces? If this is not so, can one imagine the concept of abolishing power, without prioritising the abolition of the state?
Bani Sadr: How can the abolition of the state be given priority considering the state is the balance of power between the internal and foreign relations of force, while those relations remain in place? Your question contains its own negation: the outcome of the relations of dominance can neither be abolished prior to these “relations”, nor can it be an institution separate and above society. Therefore social change is in its subjective structure and the make-up of its relations. A mistaken judgement resulted in our society paying a heavy price. But this experience is behind us. Therefore we must know that humans are above foundations (institutions). The rule of social life is this: when humans become free they free others – the sign of the humans becoming free is hope and joy and the sign of his entanglement in the grip of power is disillusionment and melancholy.
AM:
in explaining your views you hinted at the “guardian republic of people”. How
do you define this? (my emphasis is on the velayat).
Do you think that by accepting the principle of velayat and in the process of establishing a system based on it one
can move towards abolishing power or picture democracy?
Bani Sadr: Your question on the “guardian republic of people” is again based on an understanding of velayat that the mullataria has counterfeited. I must explain that democracy and the rule of the people over people accepts the principle of power as indisputable and given. In reality it is a form of organisation of the state. Moreover, inequalities are intrinsic to it. The rule of the majority over the minority is undeniable. The inequality of the elite vis a vis the voters is undeniable. And because it gives authenticity to the relations of forces, it is built on a series of political, economic, social, and cultural inequalities.
For this reason the word carries a heavy burden and its place in the expression of power – by default is democratic. Here it is worth reminding that power is never neutral, not least for this reason that for it to exist, one person must have and another not have it.
The velayat of friendship – the word has its root there – participation, has within it real and not superficial equality. It is compatible with the expression of freedom and with democracy and the principle of participation. The ideal free society is one where no one has the ownership of decision making for anyone else (by definition the power of ownership is the position of giving commands). Therefore, in the organisation of the state and its relationship with society, that organisation is compatible with the expression of freedom whose road its development takes draws it closer to that ideal society.
It is worth recalling that democracy on the basis of participation was established in the east much earlier than democracy based on duality or the authentic power of ancient Greece. Therefore, the guardian republic of the people aims at brotherhood, solidarity, avoiding being in a position of power relation with another, to grow and help grow, to lead one another towards these values, and therefore becoming the arena of freedom of one another.
It is the exact opposite of freedom in its liberal definition, where every person is the frontier of another. If you look closely each person is in a narrow prison whose limits are with all the other people on this planet. The battle to escape this prison, creates and created that same escalating violence that sets existence aflame - the right to disagree on the belief that the knowledge of no human is absolute, passing on of knowledge to others and many other such values.
Thus velayat is the diffusion of knowledge to one another, and sharing this knowledge. Otherwise we have the rule of force and the closure of religion and ideology (doctrine) as the expression of freedom. Velayate faghih and any rule in the name of an ideology or science is a big deception, because the realisation of velayat is through the communication of religious knowledge, or ideological or scientific knowledge, from the knowledgeable to the ignorant. So if religion, or ideology or science become the excuse for power, not those, but power is in charge and rules. When “velayat” equals the absolute power of one person on society in the name of religion then that is a government that repudiates religion. And if the absolute power of an individual or a group is established over society in the name of ideology then ideology is negated. And power is erected in the name of science, then science is negated.
For this reason any power is against growth, and absolute power is anti growth and is equal to absolute ruination.
* Bani Sadr was Iran’s first elected post-revolutionary president. He was deposed and fled into exile in 1981.
Footnotes:
1. The date of the CIA-engineered coup against the nationalist government of Mossadeq.
2. A series of “reforms” in the early 1960’s. See Fred Halliday. Iran, dictatorship and development. Penguin Books, 1979.
3. The uprising led by Khomeini against the Shah’s “reforms”. It was bloodily suppressed and Khomeini was sent into exile.
4. Article 5 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic which gives unlimited and power to religious ruler over every aspect of life in the country.
5. Official preacher in the mass public prayer meeting held each Friday.
6. The absolute power given to the religious ruler when the constitution was revised in 1987. It gave him the right even to suspend religious observance in the interest of Islamic government.
7. Authors footnote: Even though brotherhood-sisterhood will not solve the problem if the equality between men and women is not as human beings with innate rights and freedoms. The purpose of using brotherhood was to remove the relation of force between them. With this explanation you can insert brother-sisterhood.
8. Bani Sadr’s eponym for the rule of the clergy in Iran.
9. In Shiite Islam, the prophet is followed by twelve imams – his descendants – who rule over the community of believers (ummat)
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