User:Mazrazi

Maziar Razi was born into a left-wing (albeit Stalinist) family and he has been surrounded by political debate, discussion and protest all his life. From the age of 3 or 4 years he was taking part in protests and was first arrested at the age of 6. He took part in anti-Shah protests from when he was 15-16 years old. His family, to prevent him from “getting into trouble”, sent him abroad to continue his education. From the age of 16-17, however, Maziar became active with the International Marxist Group (IMG), the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). Since then he has been consistently involved in various anti-war (beginning with anti-Vietnam War protests in London, in 1968), anti-capitalist and anti-dictatorship struggles.

As the first Iranian Trotskyist, Maziar Razi was instrumental in recruiting other Iranians into the USFI. In subsequent years, together with other Iranian Trotskyists, he formed an Iranian Commission of the USFI and was one of the principle leaders of the Socialist Workers’ Party (Hezb-e Kargaran-e Socialist*), section of the USFI in 1978.

During the past 40 years Maziar Razi has been a revolutionary Marxist and contributed a great deal, organisationally and theoretically, to the Iranian working class movement. During 1978-83 the period of the Iranian revolution Maziar Razi was responsible in developing the sections of the HKS in the provinces, including Kurdistan and work among the oil workers of Khuzestan. It was because of his intervention within the oil workers’ organisations that Maziar Razi became one of the first political prisoners of the Islamic Republic.Maziar Razi is now the editor of Militaant, spokesperson of the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency (IRMT), and a political activist in theIranian Workers’ Solidarity Network.Amongst many editorial and analytical articles and interviews in Farsi, Maziar Razi has published several books and pamphlets in Farsi on Marxism and working class organisational issues. They include: In Defence of Marxism (against reformism in workers’ movement), 222 pages Some observations on Karl Marx’s philosophy (theory of praxis), 26 pages On organisational problems of the workers’ vanguard, 231 pages On the concept of the party and independent workers’ organisation, 92 pages On Organisation, 56 pages On the youth (organisation questions), 77 pages Stalinism and Trotskyism,15 pages On Internationalism (four internationals), 53 pages Principles and Aims of Revolutionary Socialists, 20 pages Communism and the Worker-Communist Party (Critique of Mansoor Hekmat’s views), 137 pages In Defence of Troskyism Comrade Razi has also written introductions to the following classics which have been recently re-published and also appear on the Farsi section of MIA:

The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels) Theses on Feuerbach (Marx) Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx) The Permanent Revolution (Trotsky) The Transitional Programme (Trotsky) Results and Prospects (Trotsky) The Paris Commune (Trotsky) Stalinism and Bolshevism (Trotsky) Their Morals and Ours (Trotsky) Everyday Notebooks (Trotsky)

_____________________________________
 * A brief history of Iranian Trotskyism

The founders of Iranian Trotskyism became active in Britain in the late 1960s. In opposition to Stalinism, Maoism and the guerrillaist tendencies, they established an Iranian Commission within the USFI (United Secretariat of the Fourth International) and based their activity on the Transitional Programme and the first four congresses of the Comintern. They produced a theoretical and political journal called Kand-o Kav.

During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, there was a unity congress of the Iranian supporters of USFI in Europe and the supporters of the American Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). In early 1979 the Iranian Socialist Workers’ Party (Hezb-e Kargaran-e Socialist – HKS) was launched. Within a few months, however, the SWP tendency (led by Babak Zahraie), began to have illusions in the Iranian bourgeois-clerical regime of Khomeini. The group from Europe were very critical of the USFI for the de facto support of a group that had developed illusions in the Khomeini regime. A split took place and the Babak Zahraie group continued its class-collaborationist activities under the name of the Revolutionary Workers Party (Hezb-e Kargaran-e Enghelabi – HKE) until they liquidated themselves a few years later.

After 1983 some HKS members were forced into exile and produced a document that was critical of the USFI’s policy and formally left it. Up to 1990 they produced Socialism va Enghelab (Socialism and Revolution), a theoretical journal. In 1991, Maziar Razi, one of the founders of HKS and SE, together with a section of comrades, reorganised themselves and published a regular workers’ paper which subsequently led toKargar-e Socialist (Socialist Worker) and the formation of the Iranian Revolutionary Socialists’ League (IRSL). In September 2008 the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency (IRMT) was formed.

IRMT is currently the only Iranian Trotskyists organisation. The other ‘Trotskyists’ groups have all disappeared. The orientation of the IRMT is towards building a workers’ organisation in Iran. IRMT has a theoretical Journal (Didgah-e Socialism Enghelabi) and a publications team called Nashr Kargari Socialisti which has published the major works of Trotsky and IRMT leaders. Militaant is the IRMT’s monthly journal.