Once again, the chant “Death to the Dictator” echoes through the street protests in Iran; a chant that is not merely the explosion of accumulated anger, but the expression of a deep and structural crisis in the relationship between society and the ruling political power. A crisis whose roots are intertwined with the entirety of the dominant socio-economic order, and which reproduces itself in the form of chronic economic crises, growing inequalities, political blockages, and the collapse of future prospects. Crises that, due to the inability and lack of will of the rulers to respond, have surpassed the threshold of social discontent and have turned into a crisis of political rule.
Under such conditions, the protests of various social strata- from workers and toilers to youth, women, and the urban and rural lower classes- can no longer be contained within the framework of scattered demands. Protest goes beyond reacting to individual policies or decisions and targets the entire political order. At this historical juncture, the central question is no longer “protest” as a negative act, but the question of alternatives and political power: which force will organize this power, with what horizon, and in whose class interest.
It is precisely here that both the significance and the danger of the slogan “Death to the Dictator” become apparent. Despite its radical charge, the slogan can carry a dangerous reductionism: reducing the question of political power to the removal of a single individual. As if, with the departure of the “dictator,” the relations of domination would also collapse. Yet dictatorship is not a personal deviation but a historical and class form of organizing political power—a form whose primary function is to preserve and reproduce the rule of a minority over the majority in contemporary society.
Focusing protests on one individual or faction without a fundamental critique of the structure of the state and its function within Iran’s capitalist order paves the way for the continuation of the same relations. Dictatorship can change its face; it can cloak itself in legality; it can appear in the guise of parliamentary and electoral institutions. But if political power serves the reproduction of class domination, no qualitative transformation will occur. Under such conditions, the dictatorship of a minority over the majority persists- and “Death to the Dictator” can easily turn into “Long live the next dictator.”
Iran’s recent history is a clear testimony to this reality. The 1979 uprising stands as a prominent example of a mass revolution that ended in defeat through the seizure of political power by the counterrevolution, the takeover of the military-bureaucratic apparatus, and the bloody repression of revolutionary forces. This experience showed that the down of a regime does not in itself mean the end of dictatorship.
Alongside overt repression, the modern capitalist state employs a complex arsenal of ideological, psychological, and media instruments to contain protests. In the recent waves, in addition to the regime’s worn-out labeling tactics—such as attributing protests to a “foreign enemy”—we are also witnessing an organized project to discredit the protests by linking them to monarchism. This operation, relying on bots, artificial intelligence, and power-aligned so-called “mainstream media” tied to imperialist powers, is not a media error but part of a coordinated effort to limit the possible horizons of political power and neutralize the revolutionary process. For the rulers, the key issue is not whether protest exists, but how far it goes and how its transformation into a social revolution can be prevented. In advancing this policy, the regime of the Islamic Republic and the right-wing opposition, despite their apparent differences, act in strikingly parallel and complementary ways.
Politics without the People; People without Power
Within this policy framework emerges one of the most dangerous political distortions: the conscious negation of politics as the organized practice of the masses and its replacement with the illusion of change from above. Hostility toward parties, councils, trade unions, and independent social organizations; the displacement of concrete programmatic demands in favor of political vagueness; and the substitution of democratic institutions with “symbolic leaders” are all components of the same logic: politics without the people—and therefore people without power.
This logic has already been tested both under the Pahlavi monarchy and in the Islamic Republic. In this model, decisions are made from above while the people are reduced to extras or at best to “hashtag posters,” “like clickers,” and “mandate givers.” The masses are not political subjects but objects of political management. Their ultimate role is to entrust their fate to a “leader,” repeat approved slogans, or merely go to the ballot boxes, from the presidential spectacles of the Islamic Republic to the imaginary “referendum boxes” of the right-wing opposition. Within such a framework, there is no need to present a clear program for resolving the crises, because the people are not meant to decide in the first place.
Silence regarding a real program and the mechanisms for the conquest of power by the suffering and working masses reveals that the fascistic-inclined monarchists, who attempt to ride the wave of social protests possess no democratic project whatsoever. Their hostility to every form of independent organization- from parties and councils to workers’, women’s- and student organizations- is not accidental but a conscious effort to disarm society and pave the way for another dictatorship. Slogans such as “Now is not the time for party and program” or “Unity is more important than anything” serve as a cover to sideline deep class, gender, ethnic, and center-periphery divisions and to preserve the same unequal relations. The result of this path is the elimination of independent voices, the sanctification of a single narrative, and the tabooing of criticism within the opposition.
Historical experience clearly shows: any power constructed without conscious organization and direct participation of the people will sooner or later act against those very people. The negation of politics in this sense ultimately amounts to the negation of democracy- even when carried out in the name of freedom.
The Real Alternative: Power from Below
The lived experience of Iranian society, especially the younger generation, has already settled accounts with dictatorship and tutelage. Freedom, understood as the abolition of the dictatorship of the ruling class, has become one of the central demands of society, and the class divide has become so stark that it is reflected even in everyday language: class education, class internet, class life, and so on. This level of social consciousness shows that any political change must necessarily serve a transformation of the dominant class relations.
The protests of the people of Iran are neither driven by nostalgia nor by a search for a savior; they are the product of livelihood crises, repression, discrimination, and the collapse of hope for the future. All currents that lack a fundamental answer to these problems, from monarchists and reformists to authoritarians and technocratic advocates of a so-called “reformist dictator”, will ultimately stand against society itself, not alongside it, and will never become a real alternative.
Therefore, the fundamental issue is not simply “Death to the Dictator,” but the abolition of the dictatorship of the ruling class, not only in its political form through the overthrow of the regime, but in its class foundations. This is possible only by smashing the class character of political power, through a general political strike, revolutionary uprising, and the creation of the necessary mechanisms and organizations by the most consistent and powerful social force: the working class and the toilers.
Today the choice is clear: either the repetition of the slogan “Death to the Dictator” and the birth of a new dictatorship, or the definitive abolition of the dictatorship of the oppressive ruling class. No salvation from above, no savior, no symbolic leader, and no nostalgia points the way to liberation. Liberation becomes possible only when power is taken out of the hands of the ruling minority and placed in the hands of the organized majority. The real answer to dictatorship is power from below; the real answer to repression is mass organization, and the model of workers’ and toilers’ council rule presents the only real alternative for abolishing the dictatorship of the ruling class.
Full text of the journal Kār (Labor), No. 1152, 05.01.2026
