Video: Inauguration of IBLT

Video: Inauguration of Iranian Bolshevik Leninists’ Tendency (English subtitle)

Transcript: It’s 100 years on from the October revolution! The mankind has reached such unprecedented levels of science and technology never thought would be possible in the past. However, the human society is still ripped by massacre, injustice and discrimination.

The embryonic tendencies that Lenin had recognized in Imperialism a century ago have now matured: Multinational corporations; financial oligarchies; parasitic growth of banks, stock markets and insurance institutions; monopolies and trusts; bloody rivalries among Imperialist powers; harsh austerity measures; returning to economic nationalism, widespread militarism and wars; the worst refugee crisis since WWII; the return of barbed wire and long border walls…

Terrorism is sprouting everywhere. On the pretext of “war on terrorism”, governments have been intensely suppressing democratic rights at home and escalating military interventions abroad. Bourgeois democracy has long reached its end. The far-right and fascistic tendencies are once again on the rise from within the “cradles of democracy”.

However, this is not the whole picture. The era we are living in is also that of ever-rising class-struggle: From Greek general strikes to the 2018 Iranian and Tunisian revolts by the hungry.

Socialism has never been more relevant than today. However the greatest obstacle to that goal is still the lack of a revolutionary leadership. For some time, it was Stalinism which inflicted bloody defeats on the revolutionary labor movement, and presented an obscene portrait of socialism. The Iranian version of Stalinism, with the notorious Tudeh Party as its forerunner, paved the way for the slaughter of the Iranian communist movement at the hands of the most reactionary forces of the country. Although these days Stalinism has become blunt enough, but we are still facing another big obstacle ahead of us today: the world-wide dominance of “left-reformism” that has dragged huge waves of class struggles off the track in recent years (From Syriza to Corbyn and Sanders).

These obstacles cannot be overcome, except by returning to Leninism and its gist, i.e., the preparation for building a revolutionary party. Getting involved in this arena is the primary element that distinguishes between revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries. Here is how the Iranian left parties are doing 4 decades since the Iranian revolution’s bloody defeat: totally irrelevant, confused, still staying in denial and resisting to take lessons, learn from their mistakes and grasp the revolutionary Marxist principles. These parties are everywhere you look except where a party, from a Marxist point of view, is supposed to be. On the other hand, the spread of freelancing, individual and casual activities, cliquish relations and so on, has led to new serious barriers against the movement. The bourgeoisie is trying hard to turn Marxism into a neutralized academic science. On the other hand, we’re witnessing the spread of careerism among Iranian labor and communist activists, which, before anything else, shows itself in their incline toward “legalism”.

We believe that it is no time for a nostalgic gazing. Enough with the wandering around in closed circles! Enough with the philosophizing without practice! Enough with the casual political work and the cheering for spontaneous protests! It is time to break this vicious circle. The October 1917 revolutionary traditions, the first four congresses of Comintern, the Left Opposition, and the Fourth International along with lessons from the failure of the 1979 revolution and of the latest labor-movement experiences, all and all constitute a reliable starting point. Iranian Bolshevik Leninists’ Tendency (IBLT) has announced its existence only to go through this path.

“Leninist.org” maps out the path we are going through…