Mansoor Hekmat

Mansoor Hekmat (Persian: منصور حکمت‎, born Zhoobin Razani Persian: ژوبین رازانی‎; June 4, 1951 - July 4, 2002) was an Iranian Marxist theorist, revolutionary and leader of the worker-communist movement. He opposed the Shah and, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, led the Worker-Communist Party of Iran (WPI), which is opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was the husband of fellow politician Azar Majedi.

Life

Born in Tehran, Hekmat moved to Shiraz, where he graduated in economics at the University of Shiraz. He moved to London in 1973, where he was introduced to Marxist ideas and became a critic of what he saw as distorted versions of communism, including Russian communism, Chinese communism, the guerrilla warfare movement, social democracy and Trotskyism.

He founded the Union of Communist Militants in 1978, then took part in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 – marked by the creation of workers' councils (shoras) – and, unlike the major part of the Iranian left-wing, refused to pay allegiance to Islamism and Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. He denounced the "myth of a progressive national bourgeoisie".

Hekmat's grave in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Because of mounting repression against political opposition groups in Iran, Hekmat sought refuge in Kurdistan in (1981). Hekmat's Union then fused with a Kurdish group of Maoist roots, Komalah – together, they formed the Communist Party of Iran (CPI). Hekmat and a group of other CPI members left the party and, in 1991, founded the WPI. He also helped establish the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq.

He died of cancer in his London home and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, a few meters away from Karl Marx's grave.

Views

Hekmat supported the "return to Marx", and theorized that the working class is to rely only on itself - arguing that it had been the only class to impose beneficial changes in the 20th century. He opposed Stalinism and never accepted that either the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China were socialist countries. Hekmat was also a practicing fruitarian.

Hekmat was an anti-abortionist. He criticized the lack of compassion from the feminist movement on this matter. Strongly opposed to Islam, he once referenced to it as "the religion of death".

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