In the neoliberal phase of accumulation, capitalism underwent several dynamic changes. Its operations were downsized, re-organized and technologically upgraded. This is how David McNally puts it, in his highly recommended new book, Global Slump: "It is not simply that jobs went to the South, though in some industries this clearly happened. It is more that a severe process of restructuring occurred that involved an enormous downsizing of workforces and “leaning” of production systems everywhere. Geographic reorganizations, sometimes within the bounds of a nation-state, as in the flight of plants from the northern to southern United States, were one part of this picture. While industry-specific changes may have been in play in the case of steel, we observe a common pattern combining new technologies with old-fashioned employer tactics of speed up, contracting out, and undermining of unions. Production was made more “flexible” largely by making labor so—by tiering wages, altering shifts, increasing insecurity and precarious employment (casual, part-time, and contract work), and enhancing employers’ power to hire, fire, and reorganize work. New technologies thus combined with old forms of precariousness to boost labor productivity.” (pp. 47-8)

This reorganisation of capitalism - made possibly by raw class power and imperialist aggression toward the global South - had been conceived in its essential outlines within the laboratories of the social sciences departments of universities, a long-standing redoubt of ruling class project design. The 'Chicago Boys' just happen to be the most easily recognisable brand name of this particular firm and its maitres penseurs. The pretext was that centralised planning, corporatism, collective bargaining the hierarchies of the Keynesian era, had failed. The solution was capitalist freedom, of the kind extolled by Friedrich Hayek.

Hayek's approach to 'freedom' placed great stress on information. The case for markets and competition, and against socialism and planning, was based on the problem of how producers would come by the relevant knowledge to behave in an efficient manner. This knowledge could not be accumulated and concentrated in the hands of planners, but was distributed in fragments, bits of incomplete and contradictory knowledge among a multitude of actors. Knowledge and learning are necessarily constrained by one's position relative to one's peers, so that one is dependent on the pathways linking one to those peers - those being price signals. The economy thus works as an informational flow, a network which - if allowed to operate without the distortions of monopoly and intervention - is greater than the sum of its nodes. If each node comprises a partial, insignificant piece of knowledge (your shopping list, your debts, the change in your wallet, your evolving gustatory propensities, etc.), the whole network aggregates that knowledge in a way that enables the needs of each to be met satisfactorily. This approach embraces what many have taken to be the rudiments of modern network theory.

A somewhat different, overlapping critique of the old hierarchies also had its impact on the self-understanding of capitalist enterprises, or so argue Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in their monumental book on The New Spirit of Capitalism. The 'spirit' of the title, borrowed from Weber, refers to an ideology that justifies people's commitment to capitalism. This commitment is necessary to the reproduction of capitalist relations, and it must be exacted from many many more people than can expect to significantly benefit from the process. These firms, having adopted lean production and flexibility, sought through the 1970s to incorporate elements of the Sixties critique of capitalism, of counterculture, and re-organise their systems along networked lines, embracing some of the ideas of self-management: "autonomy, spontaneity, rhizomorphous capacity, multitasking (in contrast to the narrow specialisation of the old division of labour), conviviality, openness to others and novelty, sensitivity to differences, listening to lived experience and receptiveness to a whole range of experiences, being attracted to informality and the search for interpersonal contacts". (p. 97) This is not, of course, to say that corporations ceased to be hierarchies, that managers ceased to control, or that spontaneity and creativity ceased to be stifled. This is an ideology, at the centre of which is a hard kernel of reality, that being lean production, flexi-working, spatial re-organisation and technological upgrading.

In the field of academic production, things were not much different. Employees of universities undergoing proletarianisation were also encouraged to think entrepreneurially, embrace transdisciplinarity, and so on. (Students are now also being encouraged to think entrepreneurially, as a demonstration of 'corporate skills' will give them higher marks.) But these employees were not always or necessarily unwilling in their task, and the intellectual reaction that accompanied this global capitalist reformation, which was inaugurated by a particularly grotesque revival of McCarthyism on the Left Bank, tended to evince the same suspicion of planning, of centralisation, and particularly of totalitizations such as nations, classes and societies, as the Hayekians. There was only the fragmentary and the contingent. Mrs Thatcher's jibes against the idea of class and society were met with differing degrees of mortified outrage at the time. But in the academia - including the humanities departments that the Thatcherites tended to disapprove of - the idea that such metanarratives were inherently absurd and oppressive was gaining currency.

In practise, what tended to happen was that the metanarratives based on class, agency, power, social determinants, and so on, tended to be replaced by metanarratives based on informational flows, networks, autonomous processes, choice and flexibility. Sometimes this went under the heraldry of 'postmodernism', but not always. The emergence of 'globalisation' as the master-concept of the 1990s was accompanied by a blizzard of academic work on informationalism, the knowledge economy and so on. Signs and symbols, more than matter, were the determinants of life on earth. It's relevant to stress how widespread this anti-materialist turn was, and in how many fields. If in the field of economics, materialist value theory was replaced by a (circular, mundane) subjective value-theory, in the field of history, materialist accounts of class, labour, sex and oppression entered a recession, making way for the 'cultural turn', while in sociology, the courtiers of the Third Way such as Anthony Giddens and Charles Leadbeater vaunted the 'knowledge economy' and the 'weightless society'. As capitalism started to make its returns increasingly on inflated values in the stock market, its most vulgar apologists held that this bubble was nothing other than a "most of us make our money from thin air", producing nothing that can be touched, weighed or easily measured. Globalization itself was conceived of as an autonomous, self-expanding process, almost as a Weltgeist against which humanity was powerless.

So, by this point, you'll be wanting me to explain what all this has to do with the new social movements, with the multitudes, with swarms, with networks and their technophilic informationalist paradigms? What bearing could it have on the strange, hubristic notion of decentralised, networked, non-hierarchical, autonomously self-sustaining social movements? Well, I'll have to deal with that in another post.

So, the BBC has responded to the furore over its ludicrous interview with Jody Mcintyre, thus: "I have reviewed the interview a few times and I would suggest that we interviewed Mr McIntyre in the same way that we would have questioned any other interviewee in the same circumstances." That's exactly the problem. The BBC's absurd willingness to abase itself before the powerful, to bully and browbeat people on behalf of power, to instinctively side with authority wherever it is contested, does not vary. What has happened here is that the interviewer, Ben Brown, was so committed to this role that he failed to notice how utterly absurd and obscene it is to imply that a wheelchair bound man with cerebral palsy is any physical threat to armed policemen. Brown regurgitated, without a moment's reflection as to its credibility, the "suggestion" that Mcintyre was wheeling his wheelchair toward the police, as if that was relevant, as if it would pose a threat that could possibly justify assaulting Mcintyre in his wheelchair, throwing him onto the road and dragging him across its surface. He did this because that's what people like him always instinctively do, and it simply didn't occur to him that there was any other way to behave. And that's the whole problem.

Public service announcement:

There were those, some months back, who tried to characterise the Iranian reform movement as a flash-in-the-pan upsurge of the "Gucci crowd", a collective bed-wetting of the bourgoisie. They were deeply sceptical of a movement whose apparent stimulus was an allegedly rigged election, in which the losing candidate was supported by the 'Modern Right' neoliberal Rafsanjani, of Iran-Contra fame. They reminded people of the synthetic 'colour revolutions' that have taken place. And indeed, it was hard not to think of that spate of spectacles, in which often well-heeled masses turned out for big protests before either facilitating the assumption of power of a neoliberal faction, or dying out entirely. Think of the 'Cedar Revolution' - the Lebanese bourgeoisie, face-painted and out in force, towing their Syrian house servants behind them. That spectacle moistened a few crotches among Anglosphere liberals, but it was immediately outnumbered by more sizeable Hizbollah organised protests, and it didn't last as a mass movement.

The characterisation of the Iranian movement in those terms was false in several ways. For a start, notwithstanding the 'confessions' issuing from various protesters tortured by the basiji, there is no evidence of any US involvement in the 'Green' movement. Secondly, it can't be assumed that the revolt was simply a movement of the comprador bourgeoisie. Ahmadinejad had done relatively little for the working class. Moreover, far from the movement being restricted to some symbolic appearances in big metropolitan centres, the revolts spread to poor working class areas. Even if it had been a movement exclusively of the middle classes, I would have wanted it to win - to win more than it bargained for, in a sense. It was clear, though, that the revolt wasn't just about Mousavi or the sector of capital backing him, and the rebellion persisted even after the bloody state attacks on protests left several people dead and many wounded. Not long ago Al Qods day, Iran's national day of solidarity with the Palestinians, also became an opposition protest - quite appropriately, I might add. Palestine has better allies than Ahmadinejad.

Students in particular continued to speak out and protest, while the most politicised and advanced sectors of the working class were attacked. Some Anglophone readers equate 'students' with 'middle class' (wrongly as it happens), but one result of the Iranian revolution was an explosion in higher education so that it can no longer be considered a preserve of the privileged. Indeed, just as the radicalism of some students in Britain resulted in part from the matriculation of the working classes, so the radicalism of Iranian students could be said to result in part from their poor background and the miserable economic prospects that await them despite their labours.

At any rate, when Ayatollah Montazeri died a week before Christmas, it would have been reasonable to expect some upheaval. Montazeri was no leftist, though he was initially one of the Republic's 'permanent revolutionaries' working for its export internationally. At the same time, he opposed excessive vengeance against the old Shah ruling class, and helped humanise the Republic during the 1980s when it was undergoing some of its most vicious purges, notably the killing of thousands of prisoners in 1988. He opposed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and became an ally of the reform movement in the 1990s. Having criticised Ayatollah Khamenei, whose political instincts are usually reactionary, he was placed under house arrest. Most significantly, he issued a fatwa against Ahmadinejad's re-election this year. He instantly became a muse to the 'Green' movement. Upon his death, the protesters didn't mourn - they organised. Protests broke out not only in Tehran, where some reports apparently speak of protesters taking control of the streets, but also in Najafabad (Montazeri's birthplace), Isfahan, and Zanjan, where police allegedly tried to prevent memorial services from taking place. In the protests that followed, the state responded with its usual combination of tact and diplomacy. Yesterday, the day of Ashura, eight were killed and three hundred injured according to Le Monde. The dead reportedly include Mousavi's nephew. But if drowning the last protests in blood didn't work, how can the authorities assume that it will work this time? Look at these protesters:







If those writing the reform movement off as another 'colour revolution' were correct, we probably wouldn't be witnessing such scenes. There is no way that this is over. The old order in the Middle East, from the US-backed Mubarak dictatorship to the Islamic Republic, is breaking apart. A counsel of despair tells us that the only alternative to the current regime in Iran is some schlemiel maintained by Washington. However, this assumes that the current Iranian ruling class is the country's best vanguard against imperialism - an absurd proposition. The reformers are not Washington stooges, and their success would make attacks and sanctions emanating from Washington less plausible. It also assumes that no social class or coalition in Iran has the resources to build a better, more just state under the duress of pressure from the US. That has always been an excuse of developmentalist, and even 'socialist', despotisms. But there is no reason for us to accept this.

The attempt to drown the protests in rivers of blood have reportedly led to a "massacre" in Baharestan Square, outside the Iranian majles, today. Tens of thousands of basiji reportedly surrounded hundreds of protesters in this small square, and battered them, then opened fire on them. It's not just basiji - multiple reports indicate that young men without uniforms were given batons and let loose. How much of this is true is obviously impossible to tell, but given that dozens have been killed so far, the worst would not be surprising. The regime probably believes it has this situation locked up, for now. And maybe it does: who would dare to guess that protesters will continue to keep putting themselves through this? But the fact of having to resort to this level of brutality is indicative of a state in deep crisis. Police have been nicking protesters and parading them on television with confessions blaming the Western media for leading them astray. This would imply that the Iranian state has roughly the same idea as US neoconservatives - that democracy and protest is somehow the a cultural peculiarity of the 'West', which can only be imposed on Iran from without.

Various statements of solidarity with the protesters are being circulated. The NPA are pledging to join protests to show solidarity with the people and travailleurs of Iran. On the anti-imperialism front, I would draw attention to this statement by Venezuelan socialists. There also is an intervention by Slavoj Zizek, which has been circulated by Iranian academics, and is published here. I don't need to restate my scepticism about Zizek's broader politics, nor do I agree with every last word or emphasis. However, I do think it makes some very important points, perhaps the most important of which is that anyone on the left who doesn't see an emancipatory dimension in the protests is politically defunct. The bloodless lack of enthusiasm for what is manifestly a democratic movement in some of the commentary reflects not anti-imperialist sensibilities so much as political timidity. The key here is universality: these protesters are no different from those who have been beaten or killed in Genoa, in London, in LA, in Athens, and everywhere that the state is challenged by a democratic movement and responds in this way. Their case for solidarity is not diminished by the fact that they live in a society that has been threatened by imperialism. On the contrary, it means we ought to redouble our efforts.

The dilemma faced by commentators of all kinds, not just bloggers, on the Iranian protests can be summarised by a single, annoying portmanteau word: instapunditry. The pressure to take a view prematurely in such a situation can only produce a series of stock responses, either based on CNN filtered news, or speculation from various samizdat-style websites, or material provided by the Iranian media itself. And after all, while these protests had precedent in previous student and workers rebellions, the sheer scale of upheaval had no precedent in the entire history of Islamic Republic. How to relate to that?

It has been possible to be both eloquent and consistent only be relying on an analysis made for a different situation that seems to fit. Thus, right-wing bloggers have tended to interpret the events in terms of the 'colour revolution', involving a relatively smooth transfer of power from a weakened, no longer hegemonic ruling bloc, to a pro-US faction. symbolised by a striking advertising symbol - the purple finger, the green fingers, etc. A few left-wing commentators look at it the same way, but simply reverse the value significations. It is a handy ready-made template, and if it were an accurate reading, then the protesters would have been little more than useful idiots for a comprador elite. But there is little evidence that anything like this is happening. The most we have seen is some bizarre rumours about Israel trying to promote a 'twitter revolution' (probably put about by Twitter, you know). Similarly, prefabricated ideas about Ahmadinejad representing the uneducated poor and Mousavi representing the articulate middle class, have been ubiquitous on all sides. And just the same, they have turned out to be wrong.

The difficulty is amplified by the fact that there doesn't appear to be a clear left-wing pole in this conflict. To try and find that pole, there has been a tendency to feed stereotypes about Ahmadinejad being a firm anti-imperialist and populist, neither of which really bear scrutiny. On the other hand, some have interpreted the reformists and Mousavi in particular as having far more left-wing credentials than they really do. Thus, in a typically interesting and fruitful discussion, Hamid Dabashi claims that Mousavi is universally known as a "hardcore socialist". He is not a socialist, of course. Even when he was on the 'Islamic Left', it would have been a stretch to call him a socialist. Then, he favoured nationalisation and redistribution of wealth, neither of which he supports now. (Of course, back then Mousavi was also co-responsible for quite brutal purges of the left from the government and public institutions, which he may now regret.) But this background is important for mapping out one dimension of the dispute. Since the early 1990s, the 'Islamic Left' that Mousavi represented has tended to retreat to various forms of social liberalism. The catastrophic experience of the Iran-Iraq war, followed by the collapse of the USSR, formed the background to this shift. They also faced increasing difficulty as many of their candidates were struck off the elections lists, and they lost control of the majles to a conservative-centrist coalition. As such, they drifted into the 'reformist' camp, de-emphasised economic statism, and focused more on questions of human rights and democracy. What remains of the Iranian left is almost certainly in the reform movement today.

Another problem with interpretation is that domestic social conflicts interact in a very complex way with imperialist pressure. Thus, even during Rafsanjani's 'pragmatic' reign which sought to improve relations with Europe and the US and expand international trade, Clinton imposed an economic embargo, starting with partial sanctions in 1993, and then a full embargo including on oil production in 1995. Why did he do this? It seems it was partly due to pressure from the pro-Israeli right, which wanted a much more aggresive response to, eg, Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. This strengthened the position of the Iranian hard right who, because of their basis in the bazaar merchants, weren't particularly interested in opening up to international trade anyway. Even Khatami couldn't get the sanctions released, despite overtures to the US. Not because there weren't forces in American ruling circles interested in talking, but because the stubborn fact is that Iran is not about to abandon its geopolitical interests and those matter far more to the US than any internal liberalisation in Iran.

None of the current elite factions are going to deliver Iran to the US as a client regime, and there would be no popular basis for it - this, by the way, is one reason why they haven't been able to impose a 'colour revolution', and why Bush had to resort to violent forms of interference, sponsoring terror groups and bombings and so on. So, it can't just be assumed that a reformist success would necessarily be in the interests of the US - it depends how those interests are construed, and what the reigning strategy is. For example, it really seems at this point as if both the US right-wing and the Israeli leadership would much rather deal with Ahmadinejad, the better to expedite the case for war. This suggests, not that Ahmadinejad is an effective anti-imperialist, but that he and the conservative leadership backing him are actually rather poor defenders of the country. For the realpolitikers around Obama, I suspect regional stability is more important at the moment than either candidate.

In short, just as the neocons and their 'decent' allies are likely to be disappointed by the result of these protests, especially if they manage a decisive win, so there's no reason for leftists to panic at the prospect of the CIA taking control of the situation and engineering another client-state.

I don't know if this is unprecedented, exactly, but I suspect the intensity of infighting among Iran's rulers is novel. Aside from the arrests of reformists, we have the open targeting of even quite establishment figures, members of the Rafsanjani family and so on. Now, the conservative majles speaker Larijani has said that 'most' Iranians think the election result was fixed. He has been condemning the protesters, but there are now reports that he's expressing 'concern' over the crackdowns. And he is being attacked in what would ordinarily be sympathetic right-wing papers. We've had Montazeri, apparently one of those who exerted a humanising influence on Iran's penal system in the 1980s, denouncing the election results and the attacks on the protesters. We've had Khatami attacking the 'hardliners' and condemning the government for outlawing protests. I don't encourage anyone to put their faith in any of these individuals, but the fact of the shift is significant and bears consideration. The protesters didn't just take advantage of a split; they stuck a big crowbar in it, and pushed. The neocons are trying to take credit for this on the bizarre assumption that the destruction of Iraq belatedly prompted a liberation movement in Iran. A sharp piece by Justin Raimondo points out that it is far more likely that "the Obama effect" (actually, the effect of the US facing defeat in Iraq) allowed Iran's system to open up a bit more, and enabled the establishment to air its differences a bit more openly.

If it was just a split in the ruling class, those who expected the movement to fizzle out would have been right. But so far, despite some premature indications from commentators, there is no sign that they are right. Yesterday's protests apparently spread well beyond Tehran, with this footage purportedly coming from the southern city of Kerman. Despite the ongoing violence of the state, the protesters kept coming out, in new places. Given the extreme brutality of the basiji, it is amazing that the protesters didn't just stop turning out. But it may be that the repressive strategy is blowing back on the state. For, after the murder of Neda Soltani, and the reaction against it, Mousavi seems to feel more confident to make his move. He and other 'reformers' are backing protests over this, apparently despite a government ban - quite unlike previous occasions where they have backed down and allowed protesters to brave the basij militias alone. He now says he is trying to organise a general strike, and is getting some interesting advice from people responding to his Facebook message. But if the protesters had followed his advice and stopped turning out when rallies were declared banned, he would not now be in a position to talk about a general strike. Unconfirmed reports on The Guardian have suggested that 30% of workers in Iran are already striking - which, if true, would be a phenomenal rebuke to the government, which threatened that anyone who didn't turn up for work would be fired. Try sacking 30% of the workforce.

With the protesters, or with the state? The charge of some on the left is that by backing the protesters, one is de facto drafted into the camp of the crooked neoliberals behind Mousavi's campaign. Moreover, it is claimed, since there has been no proof as yet of an electoral fraud, it is also to support a movement that rejects the popular will. Such is the gist of the post that appears immediately below this one and, though I don't think the manner of putting this argument reflects well on those who are making it, this does need to be discussed. We admit that there can be no conclusive verdict on fraud in the Iranian elections short of a full and impartial investigation conducted by the Islamic Republic itself. That such an investigation is not forthcoming, and that the only concession in this direction was prompted by the protests, suggests that the interests of veracity in this matter are best served by the popular revolts we have seen. And if we decline to join those who are absolutely convinced that fraud was perpetrated, until matters become far more clear than they presently are, we equally refuse to align with those who take the contrary position as an article of faith.

The truth is, almost everything we are hearing on this topic from either side of the argument is hearsay and speculation. We are told that a poll predicted the results, though it seems it didn't, and was at any rate taken before the campaign had really begun. We are told that secret pre-election polling by the Iranian government predicted a massive win for Mousavi, though we have no way of telling how true this is, any more than we can verify the document circulating that purports to be a letter to Khamenei from the interior ministry confirming Mousavi's win. We are told that many of the regional results are hard to credit, but also that any statistical analysis at this point is inconclusive. A preliminary analysis by a team led by Iranian historian Ali Ansari for Chatham House suggests that in two provinces, the supposed turnout was higher than 100%. The report asserts that to believe the results we have to make improbable assumptions about Ahmadinejad's support. In many areas, he gained not only all conservative votes, all new votes, and all centrist votes but additionally almost half of previously reformist voters. Again, highly suggestive (and I do recommend a thorough reading of the document), but not conclusive proof. One could go on - secret polls, open polls, documents, pre-election violence, alleged irregularities, etc. Plenty of grounds for concern, nothing conclusive. Still, uncertain about the status of the recent elections, we are surely quite capable of discerning the grievances that led people - perhaps an overwhelming majority, we don't know - to support the Mousavi candidacy, and which now leads them to risk their physical integrity by taking to the streets even after veiled threats from Khamenei.

What do the protesters want? We know what Mousavi wants. There is no doubt that Mousavi stands for neoliberal economic policies, while also offering some political liberalisation to inspire progressive supporters. Mousavi, who bore substantial political responsibility for pushing through the nationalisation programme in the 1980s, now supports further privatization, and is in favour of constitutional amendments to make this easier. We also know that while Ahmadinejad initially expressed reservations about the agenda of liberalising state enterprises, one of his major planks of reform during his term was the proposal to privatise 80% of state assets, half of the shares of which were to be distributed through the stock market, and half to be distributed to those with low incomes. According to Kaveh Ehsani, despite the decision to distribute shares to the poor, the likely result is the radical reconstitution of wealth and political power on the Russian model post-1990. In 2007, under Ahmadinejad, the scale of privatization reached a record high, with total sales of $5bn. So, the main difference between the candidates on this question has been over the nature and pace of the reforms. It is also true that Mousavi wants to rein in the expansionary spending policies that have characterised Ahmadinejad's government, in a bid to cut inflation. It has been a complaint of some analysts that Ahmadinejad's spending amounts to 'bribery', and of his internal critics that it was unsustainable splurging that led to stagnant growth and such high inflation rates that any benefit to the poor from such spending was immediately negated. In truth, what Ahmadinejad's development projects have entailed mainly enriching those sectors of Iranian capital most closely imbricated with the state. His opponents think it more pragmatic to divert those oil profits into developing a more sizeable private sector. That is the basis of this division.

Ahmadinejad's clientelism obviously is not genuine defence of working class interests, nor has it been particularly effective as palliation. Apart from the fact that the suppression of trade unionism does tend to somewhat diminish the bargaining power of labour a bit, the redistribution hasn't really benefited Ahmadinejad's supposed supporters in the rural poor whose incomes have stagnated. Absolute poverty has not declined under Ahmadinejad, although it did under previous administrations - even under the neoliberal Khatami - while relative poverty has certainly increased. (It's possible that a slight change in inequality in 2007 favours Ahmadinejad's regime, but equally possible that the change is nothing to do with Ahmadinejad's policies, any more than the problems caused by high oil prices are necessarily his fault). Overall, there is little to suggest that workers or even the very poor have a deep material interest in electing Ahmadinejad, any more than his opponent.

Does this mean that the protesters, or those who voted for Mousavi, wanted a neoliberal strategy rather than the conservative 'populism' of Ahmadinejad? Does that range of options exhaust the range of popular opinion? There has been an assumption thus far that Ahmadinejad does well among the poor and working classes, while Mousavi's supporters are 'middle class'. But one begins to see a problem with such terms as soon as you investigate what is meant by 'middle class'. According to this analyst, 46% of the Iranian population is now middle class - but he defines "the middle class as being in a household with at least $10 per person per day expenditures (PPP dollars) and with at least a basic education (primary)." Now, if this reflects the common way in which the term is used, then marxists should be saying that what is actually happening is that large sectors of the working class backed the Mousavi camp. Indeed, we have already seen the most politicised and organised sectors in the trade union movement also back the protesters (they declined for obvious reasons to back any one candidate). So, at the very least, the lazy assumptions about the class basis of the vote and of the protests merit re-examination. In fact, the same analyst argues that a substantial layer of this supposed middle class vote comprises young unemployed people. If you're unemployed, by my book, you probably shouldn't be called 'middle class'. As far as this layer goes, we're talking about young, educated workers who are suffering in the economy and who lack the democratic right to do anything about their situation. They see no future from themselves in the current set-up. That is certainly a class grievance, but it can hardly be reduced to a petulant middle class cultural complaint - it's not the Gucci crowd, because you can't buy Guccis on $10 a day. While we appreciate the scepticism that some people entertain about these protests, and understand the reasons for this, the condescending claims and gratuitously nasty language about them does not bear examination. It actually redounds to the massive discredit of those using such rhetoric when the protesters are being murdered in the streets, with far less money and social power to their being than any of those who are deriding them as yuppies.

Further, from all that we are able to glean about the protests and their demands, the focus is overwhelmingly on changing the undemocratic nature of the Iranian state, going much further in their demands than Mousavi or his elite backers are prepared to go - abolishing the apparatus of repression, stopping the death penalty, stopping political imprisonments, democratising the state, abolishing the Council of Guardians. All these are the demands that we have seen repeated during this period, and none of them were adocated by Mousavi. The idea that the protests are just a flash mob for the crooked neoliberal sector of the elite is unsustainable. The question of whether, in practise, all these protests do is strengthen one faction of the ruling class will be decided to a large extent by the protesters themselves. There is a huge generational shift underlying these protests, and that means that even if the present wave were to fizzle out - which I don't think is likely - it is likely to recur in even more militant forms. So, the question is whether the protesters can take the independence in ideas and action that they have already exhibited and turn it into lasting movement. It is true that the left should have no illusions about this. There is no necessary reason why such a movement will take on a leftist hue. It hasn't so far. Only by engaging in the movement could the left hope to shift it in that direction. Far more important, however, is that the democratic demands and the bravery of those pushing for such changes, are worthy of support and solidarity in themselves. It isn't good enough to say that because Mousavi is a neoliberal, therefore the protests deserve no support. It isn't good enough to sniffily denounce the 'western left' on behalf of the supposedly univocal figure of the Iranian worker, the poor, or - as in the post below - Muslims. Especially since Muslims, the Iranian working class, many poor Iranians, can not be counted on as allies of either Ahmadinejad or the Iranian state.

It was a commonplace in the build-up to the elections that Ahmadinejad would hold the working class vote. This had been the case in 2005, and it was assumed it would be the case in 2009. The reason given was that Ahmadinejad had supported the working class with various benefits paid for from oil profits. And of course he is himself a working class kid made good, as it were: the son of a blacksmith who got himself a PhD, joined the right-wing in the revolution, and eventually became president. Finally, it was inferred that the workers were socially conservative and had little time for middle class people who wanted more liberal legislation. This picture, while touching on important truths, is also rather patronising in its assumption that the workers only care about bread and butter issues and that they tend toward sullen bigotry when it comes to issues of democracy and womens' rights.

The electoral coalition around Mousavi, by contrast, was seen to be middle-class, based disproportionately among professionals and students, with the loot provided by ruling class interests. (As one dyspeptic analyst called it, the "Gucci crowd" in alliance with Iranian capitalists). Mousavi was pushing an austerity agenda, with privatization and counter-inflationary measures at its core. To broaden his appeal, therefore, he touched on the progressive concerns of a layer of the population which has had enough of the basij militias and the media clampdowns and the political prisoners. He didn't actually offer much reform, but all was in the branding. (It is telling that, in much of the Anglophone media coverage, these concerns are emblematized by the status of the chador - as if the major issue is the right to expose one's hair). So, when these protests began, it seemed a reasonable assumption that it was overwhelmingly a middle class revolt - perhaps not for neoliberalism as such, but against what they saw as an electoral fix-up and the obviously undemocratic system behind it. If Mousavi's base was so middle class, however, it would be difficult to see how he could possibly have been in the lead. If the protest movement were exclusively middle class, it probably couldn't win, and could be expected to dissipate.

Some liberal analysts disputed the idea that Ahmadinejad had decisively won the working class vote. Robert Dreyfuss, reporting from Tehran, claimed that it was almost impossible to find a supporter of Ahmadinejad even in the poorer areas. Juan Cole, disputing the primacy of class in interpreting Iranian elections, pointed out that neoliberal reformers such as Khatami had won 70% of the vote in 1997, and then over 78% in 2001. Khatami obviously had to win support far beyond his business supporters. This did not prove that the reformers had a majority in 2009, of course - we aren't going to get proof, whatever the truth of the matter is - but it does mean that caution is called for in the assumptions that we make. Reza Fiyouzat makes what seems to be to be a far more compelling point, though: "The most class-conscious, the most politically active of the Iranian working classes, are by far the most anti-government. How do we know this? We know this because they invariably end up in jail." Well, quite.

The issue of class is important here, not because the workers are angels with whom we may not ever differ, but because their organised power is necessary to make even these democratic demands effective. Even if the protesters were all middle class, I would want them to win. Truth be told, I would want them to win even more than they bargained for - to win so comprehensively that they gave a shot in the arm to the working class and facilitated their rapid self-organisation outside of the Islamic Labour Council approved unions. Never mind a general strike: what is urgently needed is the reappearance of the shoras. And we have seen the riots spread chaotically to working class areas of Isfahan (see also), where the protesters drove out the police, and the southern city of Yazd. The protests have spread to workers districts in southern Tehran. Reports of working class turnout are appearing, albeit infrequently, in some of the English-language press.

There is an understandable tendency to think of this upheaval in terms of the 'colour revolutions'. I have even seen reports quoting figures from the March 14th movement attempting to associate themselves with the revolt. It's fatuous on their part, since there is clearly a lot more going on here than just another 'Cedar Revolution', with the upper and middle classes (and their much abused Syrian maids) turning out to be admired by photographers. The demonstrations have not been restricted to middle class areas or richer parts of Tehran. They have not been orchestrated set-piece protests with glory days in the sun and an atmosphere borrowed from a Coca-Cola commercial. At any rate, what the self-styled cedar revolutionaries typically neglect to mention is that Hezbollah's protests were far bigger than theirs. That isn't the case in Iran, where Ahmadinejad's supporters have plainly been outnumbered by far more militant protests.

Hamid Dabashi has an interesting article on the protests in Iran. He points out that, whatever the truth on the elections, the 'fix' has become a 'social fact' inasmuch as millions of Iranians are staking their lives on that very belief. He also pointedly satirises Orientalist assumptions of the Reading-Lolita-in-Tehran variety, and takes the opportunity to remind people that solidarity, not 'democracy promotion', is what is required.

Unfortunately, the excitement about the possibility of a mass civil disobedience campaign arising does lead to an astonishing final sentence - the idea that Mousavi could be a Nelson Mandela or a Martin Luther King beggars belief. In fact, the more one learns about Mousavi, the more unsavoury he seems, and the more it bcomes clear that his candidacy is essentially an enterprise of the plutocratic Rafsanjani family. And, as the Angry Arab has pointed out, when Mousavi was prime minister the Iranian state was much more repressive than it is now. In fact, it's hard to go along with Dabashi's wholehearted support for the 'reformists' who have yet to demonstrate that they are worthy of leadership of such a movement as this.

The movement is still in its earlier stages, there is an interesting document circulating that purports to be a 'manifesto' of the Iranian opposition. I don't know how reliable this is: one has to make allowances for the possibility of it being a forgery, or e-mail spam, or some NED bureaucrat's wet dream. Still, it does seem to summarise the main thrust of the protests - put Mousavi in charge, review the constitution, free political prisoners and disband the apparatus of repression. If the main goals are to be achieved, it looks as if the movement will have to move way beyond Mousavi in ideas and practise. If the protest movement were to die down following a recount in which Mousavi won, the result would probably be a few blunted reforms coupled with a more aggressive neoliberal policy. If a dozen deaths are to mean anything, the movement must surely acquire an independent organisational backbone to sustain it when the inevitable disappointments come.

I think it's a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi's supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining 'reformist' MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the 'Islamic Left' back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini's preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the 'Modern Right'. His solutions to Iran's problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less 'hard line' with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be 'reform' candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn't an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn't struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn't excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn't excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn't want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to 'review' legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.