Basic Theories of Karl Marx

Basic Theories of Karl Marx

Life and Work

Karl Marx - Part 1

Ernest Mandel

Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, the son of the lawyer Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg. His father was descended from an old family of Jewish rabbis, but was himself a liberal admirer of the Enlightenment and not religious. He converted to Protestantism a few years before Karl was born to escape restrictions still imposed upon Jews in Prussia. His mother was of Dutch-Jewish origin.

Karl Marx studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier, and at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. His doctoral thesis, Differenz der demokritischen und epikurischen Naturphilosophie, was accepted at the University of Jena on 15 April 1841. In 1843 he married Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a high Prussian government official.

Marx’s university studies covered many fields, but centred around philosophy and religion. He frequented the circle of the more radical followers of the great philosopher Hegel, befriended one of their main representatives, Bruno Bauer, and was especially influenced by the publication in 1841 of Ludwig Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christentums (The Nature of Christianity). He had intended to teach philosophy at the university, but that quickly proved to be unrealistic. He then turned towards journalism, both to propagandise his ideas and to gain a livelihood. He became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper of Cologne, in May 1842. His interest turned more and more to political and social questions, which he treated in an increasing radical way. The paper was banned by the Prussian authorities a year later.

Karl Marx then planned to publish a magazine called Die Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher in Paris, in order to escape Prussian censorship and to be more closely linked and identified with the real struggles for political and social emancipation which, at that time, were centred around France. He emigrated to Paris with his wife and met there his lifelong friend Friedrich Engels.

Marx had become critical of Hegel’s philosophical political system, a criticism which would lead to his first major work, Zur Kritik des Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (1843, A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). Intensively studying history and political economy during his stay in Paris, he became strongly influenced by socialist and working-class circles in the French capital. With his ’Paris Manuscripts’ (Oekonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, 1844), he definitely became a communist, i.e. a proponent of collective ownership of the means of production.

He was expelled from France at the beginning of 1845 through pressure from the Prussian embassy and migrated to Brussels. His definite turn towards historical materialism (see below) would occur with his manuscript Die Deutsche Ideologue (1845-6) culminating in the eleven Theses on Feuerbach, written together with Engels but never published during his lifetime.

This led also to a polemical break with the most influential French socialist of that period, Proudhon, expressed in the only book Marx would write in French, Misère de la Philosophie (1846).

Simultaneously he became more and more involved in practical socialist politics, and started to work with the Communist League, which asked Engels and himself to draft their declaration of principle, This is the origin of the Communist Manifesto (1848, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei).

As soon as the revolution of 1848 broke out, he was in turn expelled from Belgium and went first to France, then, from April 1848 on, to Cologne. His political activity during the German revolution of 1848 centred around the publication of the daily paper Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which enjoyed wide popular support. After the victory of the Prussian counter-revolution, the paper was banned in May 1849 and Marx was expelled from Prussia. He never succeeded in recovering his citizenship.

Marx emigrated to London, where he would stay, with short interruptions, till the end of his life. For fifteen years, his time would be mainly taken up with economic studies, which would lead to the publication first of Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (1859) and later of Das Kapital, Vol. I (1867). He spent long hours at the British Museum, studying the writings of all the major economists, as well as the government Blue Books, Hansard and many other contemporary sources on social and economic conditions in Britain and the world. His readings also covered technology, ethnology and anthropology, besides political economy and economic history; many notebooks were filled with excerpts from the books he read.

But while the activity was mainly studious, he never completely abandoned practical politics. He first hoped that the Communist League would be kept alive, thanks to a revival of revolution. When this did not occur, he progressively dropped out of emigré politics, but not without writing a scathing indictment of French counter-revolution in Der 18. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (1852), which was in a certain sense the balance sheet of his political activity and an analysis of the late 1848-52 cycle of revolution and counter-revolution. He would befriend British trade-union leaders and gradually attempt to draw them towards international working class interests and politics. These efforts culminated in the creation of the International Working Men’s Association (1864) - the so-called First International - in which Marx and Engels would play a leading role, politically as well as organisationally.

It was not only his political interest and revolutionary passion that prevented Marx from becoming an economist pure and simple. It was also the pressure of material necessity. Contrary to his hopes, he never succeeded in earning enough money from his scientific writings to sustain himself and his growing family. He had to turn to journalism to make a living, He had initial, be it modest, success in this field, when he became European correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune in the summer of 1851. But he never had a regular income from that collaboration, and it ended after ten years.

So the years of his London exile were mainly years of great material deprivation and moral suffering. Marx suffered greatly from the fact that he could not provide a minimum of normal living conditions for his wife and children, whom he loved deeply. Bad lodgings in cholera-stricken Soho, insufficient food and medical care, led to a chronic deterioration of his wife’s and his own health and to the death of several of their children; that of his oldest son Edgar in 1855 struck him an especially heavy blow. Of his seven children only three daughters survived, Jenny, Laura and Eleanor (Tussy). All three were very gifted and would play a significant role in the international labour movement, Eleanor in Britain, Jenny and Laura in France (where they married the socialist leaders Longuet and Lafargue).

During this long period of material misery, Marx survived thanks to the financial and moral support of his friend Friedrich Engels, whose devotion to him stands as an exceptional example of friendship in the history of science and politics. Things started to improve when Marx came into his mother’s inheritance; when the first independent working-class parties (followers of Lassalle on the one hand, of Marx and Engels on the other) developed in Germany, creating a broader market for his writings; when the IWMA became influential in several European countries, and when Engels’ financial conditions improved to the point where he would sustain the Marx family on a more regular basis.

The period 1865- 71 was one in which Marx’s concentration on economic studies and on the drafting of Das Kapital was interrupted more and more by current political commitments to the IWMA, culminating in his impassioned defence of the Paris Commune (Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, 1871). But the satisfaction of being able to participate a second time in a real revolution - be it only vicariously - was troubled by the deep divisions inside the IMWA, which led to the split with the anarchists grouped around Michael Bakunin.

Marx did not succeed in finishing a final version of Das Kapital vols II and III, which were published posthumously, after extensive editing, by Engels. It remains controversial whether he intended to add two more volumes to these, according to an initial plan. More than 25 years after the death of Marx, Karl Kautsky edited what is often called vol. IV of Das Kapital, his extensive critique of other economists: Theorien über den Mehrwert (Theories of Surplus Value).

Marx’s final years were increasingly marked by bad health, in spite of slightly improved living conditions. Bad health was probably the main reason why the final version of vols II and III of Capital could not be finished. Although he wrote a strong critique of the Programme which was adopted by the unification congress (1878) of German social democracy (Kritik des Gothaer Programms), he was heartened by the creation of that united working-class party in his native land, by the spread of socialist organisations throughout Europe, and by the growing influence of his ideas in the socialist movement. His wife fell ill in 1880 and died the next year. This came as a deadly blow to Karl Marx, who did not survive her for long. He himself died in London on 14 March 1883.

Marx and Theology of Liberation

Karl Marx was born in May 5, 1818 in Trier (Rheinish Prussia). His father, Herschel Marx, was a lawyer, a Jew who adopted Protestantism. After graduating from a Gymnasium in Trier, Marx entered the university, studied jurisprudence at Bonn, and transferred the next year to Berlin. However his preoccupation with philosophy turned him away from law. In Berlin, he joined the circle of young Hegelians called the Doktorenclub (Doctors Club), which consisted of Bauer, Strauss, Feuerbach. They are also called the “left Hegelians”, and the greatest part of their attention was devoted to the Hegelian philosophy (McLellan 1973, 32).

After graduating, Marx moved to Bonn, he hoped to become a lecturer in philosophy. However, the policy of the government refused to allow him to return to the university, and in 1841, Bruno Bauer, who was member of Doctors Club, was forbidden to lecture to Bonn due to his radical views. This led to Marx to abandon the idea of an academic career, and he began his long career as a journalist (McLellan 1973, 34; 40).

At 1842, Marx began to write his critical article about the institutions of Prussian ‘Christian State’ in an opposition paper, Rheinische Zeitung. Marx and Bruno Bauer were invited to be the chief contributors, and in October 1842 Marx became a chief editor and moved from Bonn to Cologne. The newspaper’s revolutionary-democratic trend became more and more pronounced under Marx’s editorship, and the government imposed strong censorship on the paper. The censorship was so intolerable that Marx preferred to resign on 17 March. The final issue of the paper appeared on the 31st of that month. His criticism of the deliberations of the Rhein Province Assembly compelled Marx to study questions of economic and political interests. In pursuing them, he found that jurisprudence and philosophy overlooked the material conditions of life. Many years later, Marx wrote in the preface of Critique of Political Economy:

The first work which I undertook for the solution of the doubts which assailed me was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of law…My investigation led to the conclusion, firstly, that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be understood neither in themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life; secondly that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy (McLellan, 1973, 67).

In the summer of 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, a childhood friend to whom he had become engaged while he was still a student. In the fall of the same year, Marx went to Paris, and devoted his study to political economy and the history of the French Revolution. At the same time, he published a radical journal abroad, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher. However, this was the first and last issue of this journal.

In September 1844, Frederick Engels came to Paris for a few days, and from that time on became Marx’s closest friend. Engels was the son of a wealthy industrialist but had been under the influence of both the radical Hegelians in Germany and the English socialists.

At the insistent request of the Prussian government, Marx was banished from Paris in 1845, as a dangerous revolutionary. He went to Brussels, and stayed there, pursuing the same studies. In 1845 in Brussels, he wrote one of his major works, Theses on Feuerbach, which were published by Engels. This work and The German Ideology, written with Engels in 1845-1846, indicate Marx’s discontinuity with the young Hegelians and the emergence of his own social and economical critique of religion (McLellan 1973, 152; 154).

In the spring of 1847, Marx and Engels joined a secret propaganda society called the Communist League. After that time, they drew up The Communist Manifesto, which was written in London in 1848, and adopted by the Workers’ Congress. In 1864, Marx founded the International, which is also called First International, and in 1867, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy appeared. If it had not been for Engels’ constant and selfless financial aid, Marx would not have been able to concentrate on writing Capital. Engels published its second and third volumes in 1885 and 1894 after his death (Livingston, 188). This work contains the results of studies to which a whole life was devoted. It is the political economy of the working class, reduced to its scientific formulation. Through this work, Marx attempts to show the relation between capital and labor. Marx’s health was undermined by his strenuous work in the International and his still more strenuous theoretical occupations. He continued work on the refashioning of political economy and on the completion of Capital, for which he collected a mass of new material and studied a number of languages. However, ill health prevented him from completing Capital.

His wife died on December 2, 1881 and on March 14, 1883 Marx passed away peacefully in his armchair. He lies buried next to his wife at Highgate Cemetery in London. Marx’s children died in childhood in London, when the family was living in destitute circumstances.

Some of his work are: Theses on Feuerbach (1845); German Ideology (with Engels, 1845); The Communist Manifesto (with Engels, 1848); Wage-Labor and Capital (1849); Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859); Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (1867); The Civil War in France (1871)

Religion as a Projection of Alienated Consciousness

Marx gets the term ‘alienation’ from Hegel and Feuerbach. Feuerbach builds his interpretation of Christianity upon the concept of alienation that lies at the foundation of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx accepts Hegel’s view that man can be alienated from himself, but he(Marx) rejected the view that nature is a self-alienated form of the absolute mind. On the contrary, Feuerbach argues, our idea of God is really just an idea of the human essence, and the essence of religion is men’s estrangement from himself (Bloch, 83). When human beings create and put above themselves an imagined higher being, they are alienated from themselves. Feuerbach says, “ What is positive, essential in the intuition of the divine being can only be human, so the intuition of man as an object of consciousness can only be negative, hostile to man. To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing”(Feuerbach, 26). Feuerbach also thinks of alienation as a form of false consciousness, a false view of the human essence (Livingston, 185-186).

Between 1841-1844, Marx remained a true Feuerbachian, and his comments on religions during this period reflect Feuerbach’s influence. However, Marx’s discussion of man’s self-alienation in religion was much more focused on analysis of the historical and economical factors producing such an alienated consciousness. In The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), Marx said that man has found nothing but his own alienated reflection.

Man makes religion; religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, and society. This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world-consciousness because they are a reversed world. Religion is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality (Marx 1964, 41-42).

The religious illusions not only give a sense of the emptiness and worthlessness of human life, but also offer us comfort and consolation. Alienated consciousness involves two contradicting ideas: one is that human life is alienated, unsatisfying and worthless, and the other is that human existence is not alienated once we give it the right interpretation. Hegel and Feuerbach argued that people are alienated because they misunderstand the nature of the human condition (Wood, 13). Marx kept Feuerbach’s ideas of projection and alienation. Indeed, they appear frequently in Marx’s early writings. But he saw that Feuerbach’s critique of religion touched only the theoretical side of alienation; for him, it was necessary to attack the practical side as well. Because of their own fixation on metaphysics, Hegel and Feuerbach just saw the half picture of the human condition. Thus Marx moved from the criticism of heaven to the criticism of earth, from religious alienation to political and economic alienation (Norris, 19). To eliminate a symptom is not to eliminate the disease.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…It is the opium of the people…The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness…Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth… the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics (Marx 1964, 42).

Religion as an Ideological Superstructure and Praxis

Marx explores the real origin of religious alienation itself and finds it in the dehumanized praxis of real social life. Marx’s criticism of religion is primarily related to social conditions, that is, to the economic and social alienation of man in a class society as the source of religion. In contrast with Feuerbach’s anthropology, Marx does not comprehend the sources of religion to be anthropological and psychological. He does not regard it as the result of the fear of finitude and projection into other worldliness. Above all things, he perceives the sources out of which religion stems as being society and inhuman class conditions.

In this, Marx follows Moses Hess’ analysis, which was the first to transform Feuerbach’s concept of alienation into a critical analysis of the economic and social system of capitalism. Hess had established that what Feuerbach proclaimed to be a religious alienation was only an ideological expression. He argued that the real alienation of man’s essence was based on the economic and social level.

The influence of Hess is most pronounced in “On the Jewish Question.” Marx understood a similarity between the alienation produced by the capitalist religion and self-alienation produced by Christianity (Livingston, 191). In Marx’s understanding, Christianity and Judaism, which he regarded as typical of capitalism, are the theoretical and practical forms of man’s egoistic alienation. Marx argued that, throughout history, religion (Christianity) has served capitalism as an “ideological” superstructure (Livingston, 192). In Capital, he shows the affinity of Christianity and capitalism.

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour-for such a society, Christianity… is the most fitting form of religion (Marx 1964, 135).

According to Marx, alienation is real in which it consists, not just in people's beliefs and thoughts, but also in their objective conditions in the world. If we feel our world to be empty and absurd, or feel ourselves to be degraded, then that is because we are. He concentrates on the sociopolitical source of man’s distress. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, written in Paris in 1844, Marx described the process of alienation in the alienated society.

(1) Marx argues that the worker is alienated from his laboring activity, because it is not the expression of himself but rather a means to prolonging his physical existence.

(2) The worker is alienated from the product of his labor, because it belongs to the capitalist and so the worker’s labor increases the power of the capitalist whose interest is in so many ways opposed to the worker’s.

(3) The worker is alienated from nature.

(4) Most importantly, he is alienated from the human essence, and so from his fellow human beings (Marx 1963, 127-129).

The self-alienated man is a man who really is not a man. On the contrary, a non-alienated man would be a man who really is a man. This man fulfills himself as a free, creative being of praxis. Marx argued that alienation is real, and we feel our lives to be empty and meaningless because we live under conditions which make a real life impossible for us (Wood, 14). The crucial problem is that alienated individuals lack the practical power to take meaningful action. In the fourth thesis of “Theses on Feuerbach” Marx claims the necessity of praxis in order to overcome human alienation. The concept of praxis makes Marx break with Feuerbach.

"Feuerbach starts out form the fact of religious self-alienation, the duplication of this world into a religious, imaginary world and a real one. His work consists in the dissolution of the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done…The latter (secular basis) must itself…be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionized in practice" (Marx 1959, 244; emphasis added).

Marx argues that only a “praxis” which transforms economic circumstances can free man from his alienated condition. Marx understood that consciousness could not be changed within consciousness alone, but only by changes in material acts. The misery of human being is not caused by metaphysical ideas, but by alienated praxis that one can find in the ideological consciousness. Marx increases the importance of the social dimension of human existence based on the critique of religion as ideology. He concentrates on the social relation that is the point of intersection of political and economic relations, not an abstract relation. Marx concludes: “The struggle against religion is therefore mediately the fight against the other world, of which religion is the spiritual aroma…The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion” (Marx 1964, 42). In this light, we can understand the statement: “The criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.”

One can say that Marx’s thought is congenial to Christian belief in some senses. Marx’s explanations of alienation and emancipation have a quite similar structure to the Christian ideas of sin and redemption. The hopeful future-oriented quality of this thought sounds familiar to the hope of the gospel.

Yet despite these formal similarities and positive critique of religion, the materialist orientation of Marx’s thinking based on atheism is a particular obstacle to Christian interpretation. Marx’s materialism raises an important challenge to Christian belief. If Marx was one-sidedly materialistic, Christianity traditionally has been one-sidedly anti-materialistic.

Even though it seems to be true that atheism is so essential to Marxism that Marxist goals cannot be achieved without it, if we defined Marxism as a social theory, the role played by his atheism becomes much less important. This is the starting point where Christians and Marxists (or Christian-Marxists) seek the same goal, which is the liberation from any type of human bondage. In this understanding, we can find various connections between Christianity and Marxism in liberation theology.

Marx’s condemnations of religion have a permanent validity and value when it acts to legitimize unjust structures or to pacify the oppressed. These censures have challenged Christianity and encouraged churches to be involved in issues of social justice. Many Christians who are motivated to work for social justice may not opt for Marxist revolutionary change, but they would agree that the theology has only interpreted God, human beings, and the world in various ways; but what matters is to change them.

Bibliography and Cited Works

Althusser, Louis. 1969. For Marx. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Pantheon Books.

Avineri, Shlomo. 1968. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bloch, Ernst. 1971. On Karl Marx. Trans. John Maxwell. New York: Herder and Herder.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. 1989. The Essence of Christianity. Trans. by George Eliot. New York: Prometheus Books.

Graham, Keith. 1992. Karl Marx Our Contemporary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Livingston. James. 1971. Modern Christian Thought: From the Enlightenment to Vatican II. New York: Macmillan.

Marx, Karl. 1959. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Political and Philosophy. Edit. by Lewis S. Feuer. New York: Anchor Books.

Marx, Karl. 1963. Karl Marx: Early Writings. Trans. & Edit. by T.B. Bottomore. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Marx, Karl. 1964. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels On Religion. New York: Schocken Books.

Marx, Karl. 1979. Karl Marx: Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. Vol. 1. Edited by Frederick Engles, Trans. by Samuel Moore. New York: International Publishers.

Mckown, Delos. 1975. The Classical Marxist Critiques of Religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

McLellan, David. 1973. Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. New York: Haper & Row Publishers.

McLellan, David. 1987. Marxism and Religion: A Description and Assessment of the Marxist Critique of Christianity. New York: Harper & Row.

Norris, Russel. 1974. God, Marx, and the Future: Dialogue with Roger Garaudy. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Karl Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century. New York: Anchor Books.

Stumme, Wayne. 1984. Christians and The Many Faces of Marxism. Minneapolis: Augusburg.

Tucker, Robert. 1967. Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wood, Allen. 1981. Karl Marx. London: Routledge & Legan Paul.

Iranian Student Movement

During the first two days of 2009 post-presidential election Iran was still under a despotic religious regime. The protesting groups have definitly changed this reality for ever. Two months latter the university students stood at the helm of the opposition groups. This powerful forces were little known to anybody when the protest began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to street revolution. You will not find another such sharp turn in Iranian student movement - especially if you remember that it involves a group of 8 million people. It is clear that the events of 2009 post-presidential election, whatever you think of them, deserve study.

The history of a social movement, like every other history, ought first of all to tell what happened and how. That, however, is little enough. From the very telling it ought to become clear why it happened thus and not otherwise. Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures, nor strung on the thread of some preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws. The discovery of these laws is the author's task.

The most indubitable feature of a social movement is the direct interference of the people in historic events. In ordinary times the state, be it despotic or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business - Ayatollahs, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the people, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgment of moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as they are given by the objective course of development. The history of a social movement is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the people into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

The point is that our Iranian society does not changes institutions as need arises, the way a writer changes his pens. On the contrary, Iranian society actually takes the institutions which hang upon it as given once for all. For last two decades the oppositional criticism of the Pan-Islamist reformers was nothing more than a safty valve for people dissatisfaction, a condition of the stability of the Islamic social structure. Such in principle, for example, was the significance acquired by the Pan-Islamist reformers criticism. Entirely exceptional conditions, independent of the will of Mousavi and Kahroubi or green parties, were necessary in order to tear off from discontent the fetters of conservatism, and bring the people to street protest and insurrection.

The swift changes of Iranian people views and moods in post-presidential election thus derive, not from the flexibility and mobility of protesters' mind, but just the opposite, from their deep conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what creates in a period of change that leaping movement of ideas and passions which seems to the clergymen mind a mere result of the "treason."

To be continued...

La Théorie de la Révolution Permanente en Iran

1. La modernité est une condition (et un terme) lequel peut caractériser ou peut décrire pour deux types de sociétés essentiellement différents. Le premier est une société « avancée » ou de l'Ouest, l'un dans lequel les structure socio-économique et les institutions socio-politiques diffère de ce qu'ils ont été fondamentalement et aussi ils étaient capable de produire ce changement dans leur propre société. La seconde est une société qui avait été au début statique ou même stagnant - incapable de produire de changements d'à l'intérieur de lui-même -mais au cours du temps et pour les diverses raisons historiques, il devient le sujet à l'impact d'un ou pluseur sociétés « avancées ». Dans ce cas, le changement devient une caractéristique fondamentale de la société; la corrélation entre cette société et ces sociétés « avancées » devient cruciale à une compréhension du développement dans l'ancien. L'Iran, en vertu de long rapport d'elle avec l'Ouest, appartient à cette deuxième catégorie, donc, le sujet aux changements et la modernisation socio-économiques et socio-politiques.

2. L'impact des sociétés « avancées » sur Iran était révolutionnaire; il a forcé finalement la société iranienne pour adopter une nouvelle forme de direction socio-économique et a miné la hiérarchie sociale traditionnelle; il a infecté et a transformé l'élite actuelle; introduisant de nouveaux modèles de pensée et à travers créer les nouvelle normes comparative. Le changement à la modernité aurait pu seulement résulter de l'expansion capital ou du semi-colonialisme, comme dans le cas d'Iran, qui est resté politiquement indépendant. Pourtant, dans n'importe quel changement de ce type, les effets pourraient être éloignés plus fondamentaux et plus rapides si le changement a précédé la période principale de l'expansion capitale. Sous ce rapport, les exigences même de la lutte pour retenir d'indépendance a mené à une adoption plus vaste de nouvelles méthodes socio-économiques et aux développements technologiques - ainsi à une désintégration plus répandue des modes de vie actuels et donc à la création d'un nouveau modèle. Le processus qui prévoit que ceci arrivé pourrait être maintenant tracé.

3. La corrélation entre la société d'Iran modernisant et les soi-disant sociétés avancées a mené au début l'ancien modèle pour chercher à adopter, en partie au moins, ces aspects du dernier modèle qui étaient les sources de ses forces, puisque seulement de cette façon pouvais le dernier modèle résisté à de son propre pouvoir. Ceci a impliqué principalement copiant des méthodes de direction socio-économique et les développements technologiques, cependant, le dernier modèle ne pourrait pas être affecté sans copiant simultanément ces relations socio-politiques que ce modèle a exigée. Cette nécessité a présenté un dilemme à l'autorité politique iranienne: comment changer la méthode de direction socio-économique et développer la technologie sans dérangant trop les relations exister et les modes de vie socio-politiques. L'autorité politique iranienne rencontre le dilemme en poursuivant l'ancien modèle pendant que tenter de prendre plus de contrôle du dernier modèle par l'intervention bureaucratique, compléte domination de la direction socio-économique - surtout la formation de capitale, l'empêche la croissance de pouvoir socio-économiques indépendant et enfin la force et l'oppression. Néanmoins, les nouvelles relations sociales ne seraient pas complètement éliminées ou seraient contrôlées; ils développerait malgré les efforts de l'autorité politiques.

4. Copiant un modèle avancé, société iranienne a travaillé selon un modèle tout prêt. Ceci suggère qu'il reproduise nécessairement le chemin suivi par le modèle avancé dans et le véritable modèle lui-même. En fait, l'avantage d'une société qui se modernise comme Iran est se déplacé directement vers le “fin-produit” évitant quelques aspects de développement et exécuter seulement les résultent socio-économique et technologique a désiré. Ceci a raccourci non seulement la durée de modernisation, mais a introduit aussi un processus différent - créant finalement un modèle différent qui a subsumé le modèle des sociétés plus avancées - dans quelques aspects est allé au-delà de lui- comme témoigné par l'interruption des modes de vie actuels, la nature innovatrice du nouveau mode de vie et le mélange particulier de l'ensemble.

5. En évitant certains passages de développementaux des sociétés de l'ouest, le nouveau modèle a créé des résultats curieux en sautant sur le développement socio-économique et technologique, la société iranienne saute aussi quelques formes sociales. Ces groupement social qui serait venu dans les sociétés de l'ouest, et il n'y avait pas eu d'autres façons, il y avait eu une adoption de formes précédentes, n'est pas né. D'autre part, les groupements sociaux qui ont fourni des conditions nécessaires pour le dernier modèle se sont cristallisés. Simultanément, les éléments principaux du plus vieux modèle resté: Un groupe politique absolutiste ensemble avec la nouvelle autorité politique tenant le pouvoir accumulé via le contrôle sur la direction socio-économique à côté d'un groupe sociopolitique religieux tenant le pouvoir accumulé via le contrôle sur les secteurs traditionnels d'économie; une population de petty-marchand dont la réorganisation seulement pu arrivé à l'étendue d’exigée faire les nouveaux secteurs viables pour les buts immédiats. Ainsi, le résultat curieux général était le dualisme institutionnel, les privilèges bureaucratiques, quelques industries avancées, une grande population de petty-marchands, et enfin une société civile faible.

6. Cette situation est la caractéristique du processus unique de modernisation par laquelle la société iranienne a voyagé. La situation pourrait être caractériser dans les attributs suivants:

A) Le processus de modernisation en Iran, loin d'être complet, est à certains égards avancé comme les sociétés modernes.

B) Réciproquement, les secteurs de la société n'ont pas changé du tout, en apparence au moins, pour que l'impact général est que d'asymétrie, la distribution inégale de richesse et le pouvoir, la divergence de société dans les divers groupes qui ne sont pas directement ou logiquement se lié.

C) La proximité proche de très vieil et très nouveaux modèles a créé des anomalies dans la société et a mené donc à une condition socio-politique générale qui est dans quelques aspects progressist pendant que dans d'autres réactionnaire.

D) La coexistence dans une société de deux modèles socio-politiques opposer ont amené la comparaison, la conscience d'alternatives, et finalement une conscience de modernité, qui dans quelques sens importants est révolutionnaire.

E) La nouvelle direction socio-économique et l'institution socio-politique ont créé de nouveaux objectifs et les nouvelles aspiration, qui sont en désaccord avec l'une précédente, mais puisque l'ancien modèle n'a pas été entièrement adopté et le dernier modèle pas entièrement abandonné, il y a la confusion sur les objectifs de la société et un conflit entre eux.

F) Les contradictions inhérentes dans le système économique inégal et combiné, la croissance de conscience de la modernité et les alternatives, le conflit sur les objectifs, et ainsi de suite, tout créer le désaccord et l'instabilité, et ceci crée une situation politique qui est potentiellement explosif. Sous ce rapport, la nature et la dynamique particulière de la révolution marque que la nouveauté est inévitable, et la révolution qui s'est présentée dans la société comme l'Iran a le caractère d'un sans précédent, amalgame combiné, un exposer des formes archaïque et contemporaine.

Theory of Permanent Revolution in Iran

1. Modernity is a condition (and a term) which one may characterise or describe for two essentially different types of societies. The first is an ‘advanced’ or Western society, one in which socio-economic structure and socio-political institutions both differ from what they have fundamentally been and also what changes they were capable of generating from within their own society. The second is a society which had originally been static or even stagnant - incapable of generating changes from within itself -but over the course of time and for various historical reasons, it become subject to the impact of one or more ‘advanced’ societies. In this case, change becomes a fundamental characteristic of the society; the interrelation between this society and those ‘advanced’ societies becomes crucial to an understanding of the development in the former. Iran, by virtue of her long interrelationship with the West, belongs to this second category, therefore, subject to socio-economic and socio-political changes and modernisation.

2. The impact of the ‘advanced’ societies on Iran was revolutionary; it ultimately forced Iranian society to adopt a new form of socio-economic management and undermined the traditional social hierarchy; it infected and transformed the existing elite; introducing new patterns of thought and throughout creating new comparative norms. The shift to modernity could have resulted solely from capital expansion or semi-colonialism, such as in the case of Iran, which remained politically independent. Yet, in any shift of this type, the effects could be far more fundamental and more rapid if the shift preceded the main period of the capital expansion. In this respect, the very exigencies of the struggle for retaining independence led to a more extensive adoption of new socio-economic methods and technological developments - thus to a more widespread disintegration of the existing ways of life and therefore to creation of a new model. The process whereby this occurred may now be traced.

3. The interrelation between Iran’s modernising society and the so-called advanced societies initially led the former model to seek to adopt, in part at least, those aspects of the latter model which were the sources of its strengths, since only in this way could the latter withstood on its own grounds. This involved primarily copying methods of socio-economic management and technological developments, however, the latter could not be affected without simultaneously copying those socio-political relationships which this model demanded. This necessity presented a dilemma to the Iranian political authority: how to change the method of socio-economic management and to develop technology without overly disturbing the existing socio-political relations and ways of life. The Iranian political authority meet the dilemma by pursuing the former model while attempting to take greater control of the latter model through bureaucratic interference, complete domination of socio-economic management - especially capital formation, prevention of the growth of independent socio-economic powers - and – finally - force and oppression. Nonetheless, new social relationships would not be completely suppressed or controlled; they would develop in spite of the political authority’s efforts.

4. In copying an advanced model, Iranian society worked according to a ready-made model. This suggest that it necessarily must reproduce the path followed by the advanced model in reaching that model as well as the actual model itself. In fact, the advantage of being a modernising society, Iran moved directly towards the ‘end-product,’ avoiding some aspects of socio-economic and technological development and implementing only results it desired. This not only shortened the modernisation time-span, but also introduced a different process - ultimately creating a different model which subsumed the model of the more advanced societies and, in some aspects, went beyond it, as evidenced by the disruption of the existing ways of life, the innovative nature of the new way of life and the peculiar intermixing of the whole.

5. By avoiding some of the developmental passages of the Western societies, the new model created curious results by leaping over socio-economic and technological development, Iranian society also by-passed some social forms. Those social grouping which would have come into being and had there been no other ways, had there been an adoption of earlier forms, did not come into being. On the other hand, the social groupings which provided preconditions for latest model did crystallise. Simultaneously, the main elements of the older model remained: An absolutist political group together with the new political authority holding power accumulated via control over the socio-economic management alongside a religious socio-political group holding power accumulated via control over the traditional sectors of economy; a traditionalist petty-merchant population whose reorganisation only occurred to the extent required to make the new sectors viable for immediate purposes. Thus, the overall curious result was institutional dualism, bureaucratic privileges, some advanced industries, a large population of petty-merchants, and – finally - a weak civil society.

6. This situation is characteristic of the unique process of modernisation through which the Iranian society has travelled. The situation may be broken down into the following attributes:

(a) The modernisation process in Iran, far from being complete, is in some ways as advanced as modern societies.

(b) Conversely, sectors of the society have not changed at all, ostensibly at least, so that the overall impact is that of lopsidedness, uneven distribution of wealth and power, the polarisation of society into various groups who are not directly or logically related to one another.

(c) The close proximity of very old and very new models has created stark anomalies in society and consequently has led to a general socio-political condition that is in some aspects progressist while in others self-defeating.

(d) The co-existence within one society of two conflicting socio-political models brought comparison, awareness of alternatives, and eventually a consciousness of modernity, which in some important senses is revolutionary.

(e) The new socio-economic management and socio-political institution have created new goals and aspirations, which are at variance with previous ones, but since the former model have not been wholly adopted and the latter model not wholly abandoned, there is confusion over the goals of the society and a clash between them.

(f) The contradictions inherent in an uneven socio-economic development, the growth of consciousness about modernity and alternatives, the conflict over the goals, and so on, all create disharmony and instability, and make for a political situation which is potentially explosive. In this respect, the peculiar nature and dynamics of novelty make revolution inevitable, and the revolution that have arisen in Iranian society have the character of an unprecedented, combined amalgam, one exhibiting both archaic and contemporary forms.

The Causes and Consequences of the 2009 Post-Election Political Events in Iran

Whether there was an intervention before and/or widespread fraud during the tenth presidential election or whether it was a free and fair election, the political events which occurred after the announcement of the election results have changed both the pre-election political condition and the organisational setting in the Islamic Republic of Iran. A return to the pre-election period for the Iranian political authority is surely no longer possible. The consequences of this crisis in coming months will eventually lead to acceleration of reform in the institution of leadership.

From the early days of revolution onwards the political authority in Iran has claimed, in theory and practice, that power and the political power in this Islamic regime has a divine source. The governing elite as the results are “Allah’s representative on Earth” who should control and execute the power. The political authority advocates that in order to expand the divine version of power the objective of the Islamic government in Iran is to abolish this-worldly nature of power. Conversely, thousands of writers and observers in last thirty years have highlighted the fact that the power in the Islamic Republic was nothing more than the rule of various Pan-Islamist groups from high-ranking members of the clerical establishment, high-ranking members of military and paramilitary groups, bureaucrats and technocrat groups. In other words, while the claim to have a divine root remained to be proven, in the public opinion the Islamic government was no more than the rule of wealthy Pan-Islamist groups and individual elites. The post-election street protest was the brilliant public initial to confront the Islamic elite and exhibit the reality that they are a government of those who had neither a theoretical nor a practical chastity and who are obliged to recognize the ‘this-worldly’ social events, and finally be infected by the change and modernization. The despotic nature of conservative political elite however had brutally contrasted the political reform and changes.

The brutal response to street protestors in recent political events consequently effaces the Islamic republic divine image that has built its regime upon in the public eyes and ended the illusion of legitimacy that has built upon its divinely oriented power and political power. For the Iranian society recent events was the highlight of the fact that the Islamic regime’s religious make-up and divine dressing of the last thirty years was nothing more than a protective shield and that the Iranian political authority is a this-worldly political phenomenon with particular despotic structure of power and nothing else. In other words, it become obvious to every individuals that what has happened in the post-election period was related clearly to the last thirty years methods of Islamic governing model and at the same time reflects the struggles of oppositional groups for reform in the structure of power and political power. The protesters show this is the same power as described in modern philosophical concepts and political sciences, as a this-worldly phenomenon implemented by this-worldly human beings and distinct from divinity.

To understand the post-election political setting and the governing organisation in Iran we shall first review the intervention of political groups in recent events and highlight the process of ‘submission, replacement, and neutralisation’ of the executive and juridical branches of the government in last four years. To trace the above process an explanation about the political equation between the two camps of the reformers and conservatives, the process of leadership reform that started in 1997, the changes in the concept and practice of power and political power, the political relationship in the IRI among inter-state groups, and the perspective on the modernisation in coming years, are necessary.

Since the presidential election in 1997 and the Tehran universities incident in 1999, the debate on the reform of the leadership has been on-going. The reform on politics during these years in the IRI showed that in the case of a political crisis, two organs of the government (the Guardian Council and the juridical branch) - amongst other institutions – will suffer the most negative consequences. Since the political reform in 1997 began, these two organs, under the guidance of the Supreme Leader, have had the critical role of creating the political and juridical impasses on the path for change and modernisation. On the other hand, during these years (1997-2005) other organs, such as those under the Executive branch and Parliament (especially during the sixth parliament), and the Expediency Council, played an important role in the political events and institutional changes. Since 2005 and the conservatives’ victory in the presidential election, this situation partly changed track and fluctuated, but the main process remained untouched. In other words the method for introducing the power and the juridical impositions and customs did not fundamentally change, although the political authority of the time reduced the effectiveness of some of the governing organs and sub-organs, or just dissolved them. For instance, organs such as the central bank were weakened with the frequent changes of the head of management. The governmental higher council and organisation of budget and planning was dissolved with the order of the new president. But at the same time the state policy of interventionism helped to limit the social pressure on the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader. Then the popular criticism against juridical power was reduced; nevertheless, the sharpest criticism was concentrated and directed towards political authority.

After the tenth presidential election in June 2009 a new phase in the process of transformation in the IRI began, particularly in the juridical institution. First, the elected conservative political authority during its first four years of power (2005-2009), with the repressive policies of its executive power, had embraced and produced public distrust. This widely-held opinion lead to action once the government was accused of fraud, and as a result, the regime as a whole lost credibility or any legitimate power in regaining the public trust. Second, the institution of religious Jurisprudence also lost its legitimacy after the Supreme Leader’s speech during prayers on the first Friday after the election, and was in the eyes of the public “demoted” from a legitimate leadership institution to being only a conservative political faction. Moreover, the Supreme Leaser’s call for the removal of newly appointed vice-president Rahim Mashaie (who has publicly called the Israelis friends of the Iranians) was another fatal stroke for the organ of the leadership. Third, the Guardian Council lost its credibility amongst the conservatives when two reformers were allowed to become official candidates standing for presidential election and call for fundamental changes. On the other hand, Guardian Council lost its credibility amongst the reformers when it recognised the result of the election. Moreover, in the eyes of the public, Guardian Council was no longer seen as a non-partisan governing organ, rather as a political group belonging to a conservative faction because it had stood for and supported that conservative faction. Fourth, adding to this, both the juridical power and the state monopolised media totally lost their credibility and became isolated in the public opinion because of their support of the conservative political authority during the street protests and especially because of their support of the reformers’ political trials and accusations of a “velvet coup”. Fifth, the police forces, the Islamic guard corps, and the paramilitary militia, all by killing the protesters and using violent and excessive forces, were accused of criminal behaviour; moreover, once the police hooliganism in the streets of Tehran were broadcast internationally, their credibility was extremely damaged. But next to these process and events was another parallel process through which three key controlling organs of the regime lost their credibility to a large extent. These three important organs are the Expediency Council, the Assembly of Experts and the Parliament.

First, as time passed, and as the political crisis expanded to reach other state institutions, Abdullah Nouri (former minister of Home Affairs under the president Khatami) proposed that the Expediency Council pronounce the final result of the election. But the Speaker of State stipulated that the government was not willing to give such an important decision to the Expediency Council. This position and the previous accusation of the Head of State against the head of the Expediency Council and the position of the Supreme Leader to remain silent, all together shows that this canonical organ of the regime had lost its political importance and was excluded from all decision making. Second, at the same time after the election and at the start of the political conflict, several elites and political groups directly or indirectly requested from the Assembly of the Experts to review the competence of the Supreme Leader. With regards to the balance of power and the conservatism of the members of the Assembly of Experts, this request was rejected and the Assembly of Experts, despite its important role and constitutional position, became a speculative and powerless organ. Third, among all political and governmental organs recited in the constitution, it was only the Parliament which remained intact. This was due to the recognition of its role and places in the IRI, and due to the cleverness of Ali Larijani the Speaker of House. The Parliament from the early days of the post-election conflict has intervened and assigned a parliamentary group to investigate police brutality and the torture and assassination in prisons during this period. The members of parliament mostly publicly criticised the political authority when the new president introduced his cabinet and ministers. This critical behaviour continued until the session in which there was a vote of confidence held, after which they mostly reacted harshly. Some observers suggested that a few of the candidates will be able to receive necessary support. However, although the Parliament best resisted the process of submissiveness, nonetheless, it was finally obliged to support 18 of the 21 candidates and reject three, two of whom were women. In this given situation, safeguarding its juridical position and political legitimacy was the only choice the Parliament has left to negate all responsibilities and make the public understand that it was obliged to approve the proposed candidates. A member of the conservative faction mentioned in his speech that the Parliament, similar to other governing organs in the IRI, was no longer capable of protecting its constitutional position and became an instrument for implementing the Supreme Leader’s orders.

As stated earlier in this report, this paper does not evaluate the reformers’ accusation of fraud or the conservatives’ claim of fairness in the presidential election. Rather, the objective is to understand the submissiveness process that the political and juridical organs of the IRI in the post-election period have undergone. As stated above, the most important organs and the governing institutions of the IRI either lost legitimacy or were submitted to various military or paramilitary organs over a short period of time. As a result, most juridical or political channels in the government have somehow been blocked and all of the involved constitutional organs that confronted the post-election crisis have been broken apart. In other words, the most influential governing organs have either lost popularity or become outcast very quickly. The effect of this situation has had a serious impact not only on other governing organs but also on non-governmental organisations as well. Among these, for instance, are the religious establishment and the founding personalities of the IRI, who have also not been immune to oppression and accusations.

The importance of the presence of millions of protesters in the streets of major cities all over Iran should not be underestimated. Their qualitative demands for changes and quantitative numbers representing various sectors of society were new to the thirty-year-old Islamic Republic rule in contemporary Iran. At the same time referring to popular protest and demonstration as the only instrument for bringing about change in the IRI is not promising. Rather, in addition to the effects of the post-election protests, the internal power struggle that demolished and excluded some of the governing institutions is an important factor. Therefore, the next question will be how the process of change in the political organs and the juridical structure has taken place and as a result, what are the future consequences?

To answer this question, we shall first examine how the change in the juridical structure has come about. From the later years of the ex-president Khatami’s second term, the process of restoration of the political organs become transparent in three respects.

The first was the process of structural submission: a process in which all juridical capacity of the appointed organs was used to increasingly control elected organs like the Parliament and other organs of the executive branch. In this process and in the course of time, these organs become a subset of the military hierarchy and their constitutive foundation and reason d'être was contested. This process took place particularly in other half-elected and half appointed organs such as the Guardian Council, and the juridical structure. According to some sources, the peak of this process in post-election weeks was the control of state radio and television to the extent that the text for Friday’s clerical prayer speech was also written by members of the high-ranking military hierarchy.

The second was the process of replacement: control of the elected organs with the help of the right-wing individuals and allied political groups and the removal and replacement of individuals in these organs. In a tactical and temporary alliance with the right-wing elite, conservative members of the parliament and the executive branch, high-ranking members of the military or the neutral and obedient individuals took over the elected organs. In the early days after the election, the right-wing individuals received their share of power and wealth; however, once the competing reformer groups were totally eliminated, they lost their share.

The third process was the neutralisation of some governing organs and juridical structures, which based on the constitution, the clergymen groups were assigned to control. These organs, through the process of submission and then replacement, gradually were neutralised. For instance, amongst others, the Expediency Council and the Assembly of the Experts are the most important.

In this way the IRI political authority’s organisations and juridical institution have changed in recent years. This transformation took place through a political alliance of the military and paramilitary factions, conservative clerical groups and the traditional right-wing groups.

The opposition movement during and after the presidential election, among other things was against this process as well and millions of protesters occupied the streets of the major cities to show this opposition. The gathering of the social groups against the conservative government took a confrontational form, and as a result, the above process of transformation has totally changed into another, new track, which one might say has brought a fundamental decline and destructive process in the IRI. On the one hand, the appointed organs such as the Guardian Council, the juridical branch, and the Supreme Leader have come under a sharp criticism and destructive protest. On the other hand, the political authority was no longer willing to use the organs which were previously neutralised, such as the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts, to intervene and share their power to solve the problems in hand. In fact the destructive pressure of the political crisis and the protesters were directed against the Supreme Leader and other appointed organs under his control. Moreover, in this critical situation when the parliament was trying through the expedience of Ali Larijani and some other right-wing members to help monitor and control the crisis and to play a more important role, they were prevented from doing so by the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader’s policy of prevention possibly came about due to consultation with and advice of the high-ranking military experts. Because the military and paramilitary groups desire to safeguard their interests and positions in the political authority, they oppose all forms of political solutions to this conflict. In fact, there is evidence showing that the interference of the military and paramilitary has ensured the position of the security and vigilance groups in the domain of politics and civilian spheres, and has accelerated the isolation or elimination of the civilian elite and political activists through the process of leadership reform. The office of leadership after the election tried to solve all contradictions and ideological differences through the military action, imprisonment and elimination of the opposition. Nonetheless, the ideological conflicts and interests inherent in the Islamic Republic political system have in this period intensified the process of leadership reform. In this way after the political elimination of the mainstream factions of reformers from political life, it seems with the continuation of the presence of the military in the domain of politics, the total destruction of the elected organs, and the acceleration of the process of the leadership reform in coming months the question to radical factions of reformers is if they will recognize this new political order or will decide to move radically towards regime change.