The left’s contribution to social justice in Iran: A brief historical overview

Abstract

This chapter will trace the origin of modern Iran’s social justice projects to the contribution of a small internationally inspired social democratic movement during the 1906-1911 Constitutional Revolution. It will then argue Iran’s modern social justice agenda-that is, popular sovereignty, equal rights, regardless of gender, religion and ethnicity, and preventing labor’s exploitation-was primarily advocated and advanced by socialists and communists. Both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic borrowed their welfare state and populist programs directly from the Left. However, contemporary social justice agendas must go beyond traditional leftist paradigms toward the empowerment of subaltern groups and classes in grassroots alliances beyond nation-states, in transnational networks of locally autonomous polities democratically joined in regional and global confederate structures.