The End of The Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Workers Strike

However,  the method that the capitalist government used was calculated in a very precise manner; that is, the government went around the leaders of the strike in order to make division among the workers and initiated a negotiation with a group of workers and convinced them  to put an end to the strike.  Those workers who were determined to carry on the strike pointed out this group of workers as a factor in ending the strike, and in order to prevent further division among workers they returned to work.  However, to show their good faith they gave twenty days to the employers to fulfill their demands, otherwise, they would start the strike again.  Yaghob Shafiei the Executive Director of the company also promised the workers that if they stopped their strike and struggle, and returned to work, he would do something about their demand for their back wages in a few weeks.

For anybody who had been following the current events of the strike and the entire events over the past two years, obviously one would comprehend that the decision of the workers to put an end to the strike and return to work has nothing to do with building hope or belief in the employer’s promises to fulfill their demands.  We must speak earthy and consider the reality of the bitterness of a class struggle without making any fantasy.  The real mystery of the returning workers and their submissive agreement to the employers has nothing to do with their trust in the promises that have been made; however such a dead end must be investigated within the last fifty days of struggle in which it has been confined.   The workers were defeated and they had to endure this failure.  It is because they were not able to smash through the dead end of a struggle which would have been a significant turning point.  The first condition to smash such a dead end was that the workers make the important demand for job security to prevent the closing of the factory and the loss of jobs.  Without a doubt, the struggle for the demands of receiving back wages and sacking the hirelings of capital like Shafie and Zibdari, or put an end to the repression and arresting of the worker-activists not only was necessary and still is necessary, however it would make sense for the fulfillment of these demands to be based upon the continuity of the work and the production of the factory.  Assume all these demands would be fulfilled – how would it solve the workers’ issues with the fulfillment of these demands when the factory closes and the workers lose their jobs.  In the same direction of solving such issues and to continue the struggle for this, the second condition to smash the dead end, is to promote the struggle from the lower to the higher level.  The masses of the sugar cane workers of the Haft Tapeh during the past fifty days, or the last two years of the struggle, experienced different forms of struggle.  They interrupted the production and the work; they spread their campaign and struggle against capital and its government from the factory to the streets of Shosh city.  They called for solidarity from members of their own class, and to some extent they succeeded.  They did all of this demonstrating determination and firmness but the reality is that in spite of doing all of this work and the directions taken which were all so important but insufficient and did not proceed anywhere.  The insufficiency of all these directions and the ineffectiveness of their weapons must be mentioned as the most important barriers of carrying on the form of struggle.  The strike is one of the most effective and pointed weapons of the struggle against capital.  But in a situation where the capitalists and the factory-owners and their government, do not have a problem with the interruption of production, we cannot with firmness in a strike hope to gain a victory.  The same premise would apply in street battles and road blockades.  The fifty days of strike of the Haft Tapeh from the beginning wanted the workers to pass through the stages and transfer from the battlefield to another stage.  The workers had to focus their strength of their struggle somewhere else to somewhere that could bring a real threat to capital and its government.  The issue is not merely about dissent and the strike.  The important and key point is to place the capitalists and their governments in a situation to be forced to meet the workers’ demands without a way out. 

It is precisely with the attention to this circumstance that we constantly stated to the masses of the Haft Tapeh workers that there is the formation of an anti-capitalist council, an occupation of the factory and the preparation for the planning of the work and production, that this is the only approach to the struggle.  The worker masses of Haft Tapeh without taking this direction and implementing this approach were almost drowning in the dead end.  Forming an anti-capitalist council and occupying the factory was the only way out of this dead end.  Underlying this direction is taking their products of their production from the hands of the capitalists and its government; furthermore in this situation capitalists and its government would push back the workers from what they occupied.  With the occurrence of such an event, the current war between workers and capital would exit from the lower levels.  If the workers occupied the factory and requested from members of their own class whether from Iran or worldwide, for assistance and support, they would be transferred to a new realm with an approach which contains a class indictment against capital.  They could give an ultimatum to the government where the government would have to provide the entire requirements of the factory for free.  At the same time the workers could ask from different sectors of their class for different forms of strike to put pressure on the government to accept such demands.  If the workers of the Haft Tapeh took such an approach they would be taking the initiative to spread a continuous war with the clear horizon against capitalism.  In this way, they would be putting the strength of their class struggle on the central pressure point of the capitalists.  They would turn their dissent into a platform for calling all workers to the field of the class struggle.

The workers did not do this, and were not able to break through the dead end of the struggle.  The real mystery of their returning to work and enduring this failure is here.  However, it is still not too late to focus the struggle against capital by forming their council to occupy the factory.  Now the workers have given twenty days to the employers to fulfill their demands.  Almost certainly in the best optimistic way, all demands will not be met and the workers have to initiate the strike again.  In this situation what has to be done is to prevent the same failure.  It could not be done without learning from the fifty days of experiences and turning this failure to light the direction for the future.  From our point of view, the lesson that workers will experience is nothing but a necessity in order to smash the dead end, and promote it to a higher level of the struggle which will be occupying and running the factory by a worker’s council.      

Workers, Let’s Get Organized Against Capital!

Coordinating Committee to Form Workers’ Organization (Tehran Region)

June 26, 2008

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