Bijan Jazani - Ideology of Jazani's Group

Ideology of Jazani's Group

Jazani in respect to the group's views writes: "The experience of group members in Marxist-Leninist activities previous to joining the group led to it being known as followers of the Marxist-Leninist ideology without any discussion". But they were different from other organizations of their time such as Tudeh, Jebheh Engelabi, etc. in this ideology. What was important for Jazani and his followers was to have an independent understanding of Marxism-Leninism without influence from China and the Soviet Union. Therefore their key goal and what shaped their views was to do what benefited the people of Iran. For example, their position on the Soviet Union, which called itself the leader of the world communist movement, was based on this viewpoint. They began with the idea that the foreign policy of a country is a result of the social values of its regime. This policy reflects the benefits of the leadership level (consisting of a class system) and reflects the ideology of the ruling class. Therefore a socialist government must be loyal to the goals of Marxist-Leninist and international pluralism. In this setting, they came up to the following conclusion in regard to the relationship of the Soviet Union and Iran: "In our opinion the policies of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in Iran opposes the growth and revolutionary struggle Asian countries against Imperialism and is in conflict with the chief idea of international pluralism and socialist diplomacy."

It was in this vision that Jazani explained in the relationship of the group and the Soviet Union: "The group had many reasons to not be happy with the idea of Soviet Union being the leader of the world revolutionary movements. The Soviet Unions policies in Iran in the past twenty years and the few years of bad relationship between the Soviet Union and the Tudeh party were known to the members of the group." It was because of this that Jazani came to the conclusion when seeing the relationship of the Soviet Union and Tudeh and Eastern Europe at the end of the decade of 1950 that: "... if the left movement wins the struggle in Iran, it must be aware of the Soviet Union's wanting of power. Failing to do so will lead to Iran becoming another satellite of the Soviets." Jazani said that if the power of the leftist movement falls in the hands of the Soviets, before anything else it will get rid of us. He believed that geographically Iran is too close to the Soviet Union to ignorantly come close to it without understanding the harms involved.

In the evaluation of other organizations in Iran, Jazani before discussing the organizations ideology, it would study its role in the benefit of the people of Iran. For example, in response to the blunders of the Tudeh party, which he once was a member, he gave the following conclusion:

1. Inability to understand the objective of internationalism and formation of mistaken relationships with the Soviet government and the Soviet Communist Party from the beginning to the end.
2. Being unaware of Iran's society, history, and not paying attention to the struggle against imperialism that caused the Tudeh party to lag behind from other nationalistic freedom movements.
3. Positioning itself against Mohammed Mossadegh (Persian: محمد مصدق) and the National Front (Iran) (جبهه ملی ایران)
4. Weakness and second guessing in the Coup d'ètat of August 19, 1953 (٢٨ مرداد سال ١٣٣٢) that resulted in the strategic loss of the Tudeh party and the labor movement
5. The continuation of the weakness of the rest of the Tudeh party inside and outside of the country resulting in the disunity the labor movement

There is not much information regarding Jazani and his group's early views towards the Iranian community. The earliest information regarding Jazani is in 1963 where he announced that the ruthlessness of the Shah is from feudalism and the efforts that have been taken to fix this issue did not have any positive impact. Therefore the revolutionary forces of Iran are the farmers whose responsibility is to begin a war from the village's that would result in a popular revolution. But in the fall of 1966, Jazani and the members of the group changed this viewpoint, which was reflected in an article titled "The Iranian anti-tyrannical movement, freedom fighters, and the communists' duty in the current situation." They came to the conclusion that after the Coup d'ètat of August 19, 1953 (٢٨ مرداد) capitalism in Iran grew and began to shape the policy of the government. Its members, who were mostly pro-American, began to have a bigger and wider role in the government of Iran. Since feudalism was a hurdle in the growth of capitalism in Iran they began to demand land, political, and social reform. This was in parallel with the requests of reform in Iran by America, but the Shah and the ruling government, who were protected by England, stood against these reforms. Jazani saw the failed Coup d'ètat of General Gharani as a step by America to break the stance of the Shah and also the reemergence of efforts by the National Front (Iran) (جبهه ملی ایران) that was the result of the instability of political and economic situation in Iran, resulted in forcing Amini-Arsanjani on the Shah. But Amini not only with the protection of America wanted economic, government, and social reforms; he wanted to create reforms in Iranian politics. Therefore, the Shah saw the continuation of the Amini-Arsanjani government as a hurdle in his efforts for full dictatorship and replaced them by himself and put the torch of reform in his own hands. The Shah put these reforms in place to show his unequivocal powers and at the same time by killing his political opponents the Shah increased those powers. Although political reform did not come to fruit but land reform had a damaging effect on feudalism. Land reforms impacted positively the shape of power in villages and rural areas and the political powers of the land owners decreased significantly. Jazani used this to come to the conclusion that the since the continuation of the regime is "dictatorship" therefore the ideology of the revolution in its most urgent political goal results in the overthrow of monarchy and its most needed revolutionary political goal is summed up with the slogan of "Establishment of a Republic and Democratic Government".

Because of this, even though Jazani never stroked out nonviolent struggle, but in the current circumstance came to the conclusion that open political activity is inconceivable. The government has left no possibility for this kind of activity; therefore the only method of struggle is guerrilla warfare. In the selection of this tactic Jazani and the members of the group were effected by the guerrilla warfare of South America and Vietnam and the works of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Régis Debray were their main teachers. It should be noted that it was only Jazani and Zia-Zarifi that worked on the ideology of the group. The reaction towards secret activities and book reading resulted in the unimportance of theory in the group. Some of the members of the group were disgusted of any kind of research and made joke of it. From early 1957, the group acted to address this problem but its effects on the group remained. The change of the stance of the group resulted in the decrease of the importance of struggle in the mountains and between the villagers and increase in the importance of the struggle in the cities and the group prepared its activities according to that. But this change of tactics led to problems in the center of the group. Manoochehr Kallantari that he does not believe in the ideology of the group and Shahrzad believed that the group could not make it work. Even though after discussions they changed their positions and accepted the decision of the center of the group but in reality they were sidelined from the group's activities. Kallantari was sent to London and Shahrzad was transferred to the reserve force and in October 1967 because of disagreement with the method of stealing from the bank, after the ruling from the center of the group he was let off from the organization.