Two Sides of the Same Coin of Populism? Islamic Marxism and Socialist Islamism during the Iranian 1979 Revolution

Abstract

The 1979 Revolution in Iran succeeded due to a unique cross-class coalition of social forces and an interparty alliance of opposition groups with heterogeneous backgrounds and diverging interests such as the anti-imperialist National Front, anti-west traditionalist clerics and the anti-Capitalist Tudeh Party, bound together by a common enemy: 'The Shah' and his Pahlavi regime. This essay attempts to illuminate the ideological grounds and socio-economic context which gave impetus to the formation of this unprecedented alliance in defeating the enemy but also to the irreversible historical failure in establishing a democratic political system in Iran. Considering the longstanding civic resistance of the nationalist parties and armed struggles of the leftist organisations against the Pahlavi regime, many opponents of Khomeini have argued that he took over the Revolution in the name of Islamist supporters. Taking into account the co-presence of leftist ideology and Islamic worldview among the active political forces on the ground of the Revolution, this essay proposes that Khomeini's pragmatic populism enabled him to appropriate a large part of leftist discourse into his theory of political Islam to articulate a socialist Islamism which would mobilise the lower middle class of the Iranian Muslim society. Simultaneously, some leftist organisations and Iran's intelligentsia incorporated Islamic values and Shi'a mythology into their Marxist ideology to introduce an Islamic Marxism which would speak to more educated Muslim revolutionary forces. The essay suggests that Islamic Marxism and socialist Islamism – as two sides of the same coin of populism – were driving forces of the pervasive protests which ultimately amounted to the 1979 Revolution in Iran.