In the late 1950s, Iran was a country on the cusp of capitalism, ruled by the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was brought back from exile in Rome and reinstated to power by the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the Mossadegh government. It had its own national oil company from which foreign firms profited.

The following decade was a period of transition and economic and social transformation that laid the groundwork for the events of the next 20 years. “National” oil was managed by the “Seven Sisters.”

After the death of Ayatollah Kasciani in 1962, the regime, which until then had governed with “moderation” out of respect for the powerful Shi’ite clergy, launched a plan of social and economic reforms in response to discontent over the social disparities that had characterized the previous years, with the aim of transforming Persian society into a modern, Westernized industrial power: a series of measures by the monarchical regime that would come to be known as the “White Revolution.” With substantial oil revenues—of which the Iranian state retained 50% of the royalties—a massive transformation program was launched in 1963 to be implemented over a 15-year period. Some measures implemented immediately were approved by a plebiscite with 99% of votes in favor, driven by the hope of improving the difficult living conditions of the time.

The program included, among other things: 1) abolition of large estates and distribution of land to farmers; 2) women’s suffrage; 3) compulsory education and literacy programs in rural areas; 4) privatization of state-owned enterprises; 5) worker profit-sharing; 6) nationalization of forests, pastures, and water sources; 7) protection of maternity rights; 8) public education up to age 14; 9) a national healthcare system; 10) price stabilization; 11) the fight against corruption.

But with the transformation and industrialization of Iranian society, marked by deep ethnic and economic disparities, the initial enthusiasm waned. Modernization, at times forced—and pursued primarily under pressure from the Kennedy administration to prevent the “communist” opposition linked to Soviet capitalism from gaining support and influence as the crisis deepened—did not yield the desired results.

Furthermore, for several years the clergy had been exploiting anti-Western sentiment to discredit the regime, fearing excessive secularization of the country.

The reform movement, which was intended to stem the crisis and silence opposing factions, instead of bringing a period of stability to the regime, ended up bolstering anti-monarchist opposition.

Furthermore, the expansion of state intervention in certain sectors had enabled widespread corruption which, coupled with foreign interference, did nothing to alleviate the social disparities and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few that had characterized the country in previous years. Modernization was superficial and limited to a few, favoring a narrow elite, which led to widespread resentment among various social strata—peasants, the urban proletariat, and the petty bourgeoisie—who began to see the clergy (the monarchy’s historic enemy in recent decades) as an ally and supporter of the national cause, against the Crown, which was viewed as foreign and Western, authoritarian and corrupt.

Masses of peasants and shepherds had been forced to abandon rural areas to move to major urban centers, swelling the ranks of degraded suburbs lacking services, which became reservoirs of unemployment and a sub-proletariat increasingly hostile to the monarchy’s economic program.

In conclusion, although there had been some concessions of civil rights, the economic reforms failed, fueling social divisions and creating a wide gap between urban and rural areas.

In the countryside, the agrarian reform—the central pillar of the initiative—shattered the old feudal and serfdom relationships and distributed the land, accelerated the development of capitalist farms and a new landowning bourgeoisie, which became the dominant class in a country still deeply agrarian, gaining great power, even over the still-minority industrial bourgeoisie.

The latter, still in its formative stages, was already brutally exploiting the working class.

Official statistics indicate that in 1966, out of a population of 25 million, of the 1,200,000 employed in manufacturing, 200,000 worked between 50 and 60 hours a week, 250,000 worked more than 64 hours, 100,000 more than 71, while 200,000 did not have steady jobs and worked fewer than 30 hours. The only authorized union, the “Iranian Workers’ Organization,” was an appendage of the state, and its leaders were members of SAVAK.

This secret police force of the regime, established in 1957, was composed of well-paid senior officials tasked with suppressing all forms of dissent through surveillance, arrest, and torture of political opponents and working-class leaders. As the crisis and tensions intensified, SAVAK assumed ever greater power and a central role, benefiting from progressive and substantial increases in state funding. Many opposition groups began organizing clandestinely, mainly in mosques. This occurred very gradually: it would take another 15 years before the fall of the monarchy.

The failure of the reforms and SAVAK’s repression fueled an increasingly deep and uncontrollable social rift. Among the leading voices of protest emerged Ayatollah Khomeini, who was arrested on June 5, 1963, following a failed plot against the Shah; he was later exiled. The street clashes that continued in the following days in Tehran, Qom, and other cities ended in a brutal crackdown that claimed 15,000 victims, marking the beginning of the Khomeinist opposition.

This evolution of the context in the early 1960s represents a watershed in the history of post-World War II Iran, the genesis of a series of crises and significant changes that would culminate in the “revolution” of the second half of the 1970s, the fall of the monarchy (supported by the French, British, and especially American bourgeoisie), and Khomeini’s seizure of power—an event that would mark the beginning of the Islamic regime still in place today.

The plan for state intervention in certain sectors within a market economy—however emerging—especially during an economic recession, does not resolve the contradictions of capitalism, nor does it mitigate its consequences for the proletariat, which in Iran remained crushed under a peasant and industrial bourgeoisie and a state apparatus that grants only apparent rights.

It is worth recalling here the role of the historic “Communist” party, the Stalinist Tudeh, which, after having supported the nationalization of the AIOC, the Iranian oil company, in the previous decade, maintained close ties with Moscow throughout the 1960s, operating de facto underground following the growing repression by the Pahlavis, with its cadres often in prison or in exile. This party, which had already sided on previous occasions with the Shi’ite ayatollahs—who were also opposed to Western interference in the country—aimed for an “anti-imperialist” policy —that is, one aimed at supporting greater intervention and hegemony by the USSR in Iranian oil affairs—influencing part of the protests and contributing to the emergence of various left-wing groups, especially among university students, who were hostile to the American dictatorship, increasingly perceived as the sole evil to be overthrown. The struggles, therefore, as has almost always been the case—and not only in Iran— remained confined to the transition from one bourgeois regime to another, from one master to another.

The working and peasant classes, lacking their own class-based political autonomy and an authentically revolutionary Marxist party, could do nothing but follow the impulses of the merchants, the petty bourgeoisie, and its reactionary and anti-proletarian leaderships, the national-communist “anti-imperialist” movements, to student movements, and to anti-Western religious movements, just as had happened in the previous decade, and as we shall see will happen in the next, with increasingly widespread support for Islamism, and just as is still happening today.