2026-01-14

Workers of Iran!

Please accept in advance the greetings of our conference!

The Stockholm Conference was held during one of the most critical periods in Iran’s hundred-year history. The Islamic regime drowned in blood the largest revolutionary movement in Iran since the 2022 Zhina movement. Nationwide repression of street protesters, mass arrests, and the massacre of several thousand of the risen masses of Iran—while plunging society into mourning and grief—have nonetheless not brought an end to the public protests against dictatorship, poverty, and widespread misery that were unfolding in hundreds of cities.

Never before have class divisions, the gap between rich and poor, and the rift between the vast majority of the Iranian people and the Islamic regime been so deep and widespread. The intensity of the exploitation of Iranian workers is virtually unparalleled in the world, because the regime, newly come to power, destroyed the workers’ councils that had emerged during the 1979 Revolution and suppressed every effort by Iranian workers to create independent labor organizations through dismissal, arrest, torture, and the killing of labor movement activists. Today, the Iranian working class lacks its own independent organizations, and more than ninety percent of workers are employed under temporary contracts, blank-signed contracts, and through subcontracting companies—one of the results of which is minimum wages that are four times below the poverty line.

Workers of Iran!

During the 1979 Revolution, the world witnessed one of the largest general strikes of the twentieth century carried out by the Iranian working class. However, because the Iranian labor movement did not openly and explicitly demand the attainment of political power, Islamic currents exploited the workers’ strikes—which had broken the backbone of the Shah’s regime—and themselves came to power. Instead of the working class moving toward political power and using the levers of power to realize its demands, the enemies of the workers seized power and turned against them, imposing decades of political repression and widespread economic misery on the working class and the majority of the Iranian people.

Workers of Iran!

You have never surrendered to these inhumane conditions, and factories and the streets of cities across Iran have witnessed your numerous strikes and gatherings. Although your struggles have not yet openly and directly targeted the very survival of the Islamic regime, the fulfillment of the demands you have raised so far—including those you have proclaimed in May Day statements throughout these years—can be achieved only through your own system of workers’ councils.

Today, the majority of the Iranian people are suffering from poverty and economic misery; from severe class oppression and exploitation; from gender oppression and anti-woman apartheid laws; from dictatorship and repression; from various forms of discrimination and oppression against the country’s citizens and residents; and from the accelerating destruction of the environment and its horrific consequences. Workers not only gain nothing from these forms of oppression, but these oppressions themselves are obstacles to their class unity. In pursuit of their own interests and the freedom of society, they are therefore compelled to fight all of them. The key to liberating the majority of the people from economic misery, political repression, and lack of rights —and to protecting Iran’s environment—lies in your hands.

The great lesson of the 1979 Revolution for the socialist movement of the working class is that without a political party and organization, and without assuming leadership of the mass movement, the working class becomes a force serving non–working-class movements. The fruits of the workers’ struggles must serve to fulfill their own class demands and those of their allies in the women’s movement, the student movement, the struggle against national oppression, teachers and retirees, and the environmental movement. Activists and independent organizations of the labor movement must also, like other currents, articulate their demands together with the alternative system envisioned by the workers—namely, council rule.

After the massacre of the people over the past two weeks, the entry of workers into the struggle for their class demands will transform the situation in Iran. The time has come for workers to take the initiative in struggle and in politics.

On this path, the Coordinating Council of Left and Communist Forces of Iran considers itself part of your movement and will spare no effort to help build independent workers’ organizations and to promote cooperation and unity among activists and organizations of the left and socialist wing of the labor movement.

Long live the independent labor movement!

Down with the capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic!

Long live freedom — long live socialism!

Coordinating Council of Left and Communist Forces – Iran

January 2026