2025-04-30

Workers of the world are approaching May 1st, their day of class and international solidarity, at a time when the capitalist system offers no prospect for the future of human society other than intensified exploitation, the cheapening of labor, poverty and misery, war, displacement, and environmental destruction. Capitalist governments have increasingly become instruments of capital’s assault on workers’ livelihoods, on political freedoms, human values, and social achievements.

Today, under the dominance of capitalist relations and the unrestrained pursuit of profit in the shortest possible time, despite the rapid and extraordinary advancement of technology, the gap between wealth and poverty has deepened across the world. The human environment is facing existential threats, and billions of people across the world are struggling with unemployment, poverty, and insecurity. The genocide of Gaza by the Israeli state—with the support of the United States and European governments—continues with the aim of annihilating the Palestinian people. NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine claims new victims daily. A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Sudan. The threat of war, famine, displacement, and the rise of fascist movements looms over many parts of the world.

The Iranian working-class approaches May 1st in a situation where the Islamic capitalist regime has imposed extremely difficult circumstances. This includes wages set multiple times below the poverty line, attacks on the already empty tables of working families, the expansion of contractor companies, the widespread use of temporary and blank contracts, the destruction of job security, and the increasing number of victims due to unsafe working environments.

The capitalist class and the ruling religious despotism have effectively shifted the burden of the deepening capitalist crisis by imposing such poverty and economic misery, the dead-end of neoliberal policies, the bankruptcy and repeated closures of production centers, and the consequences of intensified international sanctions onto the shoulders of workers and the oppressed classes.

Amid this dire economic situation, unprecedented poverty and inflation, a wave of executions, arrests and crackdowns on labor activists, women movement activists, militant students, teachers, pensioners, writers and artists, committed journalists, environmental defenders, grieving mothers, and others continues unabated. The prisons of the Islamic Republic are filled with leading labour and other social movements activists whose only crime is fighting for freedom and the right to a humane life.

While the Islamic Republic stands on the verge of surrounding to the United States, it has turned its weapons openly against the workers and people of Iran. Motivated by class interests, the Islamic capitalist regime believes it can subdue the internal enemy through compromise with the external one. Yet despite intensified repression and significant obstacles placed in the way of social movement activists, the regime has failed to intimidate society.

The Iranian labour movement—relying on factory committees, strike committees, and the leaders it has nurtured—is the most dynamic and protest-driven social movement in Iran. The labour movement has staged an average of over two thousand strikes and protests annually and shaped the entire political atmosphere of the country. This protest movement is a symbol of class consciousness and the firm determination of workers to confront the all-out assault by the state and capitalists.

The free-spirited women of Iran, with extraordinary courage, stand against mandatory hijab and other discriminatory and misogynistic laws of the Islamic Republic. They are actively fighting patriarchal culture and participate in the struggles of pensioners, teachers, nurses, students, and grieving mothers and political prisoners with the aim of conquering a new fronts. The student movement, as the sensory organ of society, continues to raise the banner of freedom by resisting the government intention of imposing security measures in universities and struggling for freedom of speech and thought. Political prisoners, through their ongoing ‘No to Execution’ campaign, have turned the prison bars into a battleground against capital punishment and encouraged a platform for defending the freedom of political prisoners.

While unrest and struggle have spread across various communities, on May 1st, the working class—alongside issuing its indictment against the oppressive capitalist system and presenting its urgent demands—must also, by emphasizing calls for freedom and equality, the liberation of women from oppression and gender apartheid, and the emancipation of nationalities and religious groups from discrimination, take a significant step forward in deepening unity and solidarity with progressive social movements through its resolutions. As part of their preparations for organizing International Workers’ Day events, labor movement activists and leaders must draw greater attention from the broader masses of workers to the importance of advancing class-based organization and the formation of workers’ political parties. Given the situation they face, workers cannot remain spectators to this widespread injustice, coercion, and inequality. They must organize themselves within their revolutionary communist party.

The Communist Party of Iran calls upon all workers, and all freedom-loving and equality-seeking women and men to commemorate International Workers’ Day in any way they can, with enthusiasm and especially in the streets and city squares.
The Communist Party of Iran honors the memory of those who lost their lives in the internationalist workers’ movement and congratulates all workers on this significant symbol of class solidarity—International Workers’ Day. We appreciate the sacrifices, tireless efforts, and heartfelt dedication of activists and leaders of the Iranian labour movement in organizing and uniting various brunches of the working class.

Long live May 1st, International Workers’ Day
Down with the Islamic Capitalist Regime of Iran
Long live freedom, equality, and workers’ State

Central Committee of the Communist Party of Iran April 2025