Discourse as a Tool of Power: Linking Linguistic Constructions and Knowledge

Looking at labor as a realm of discursive strategies within the Islamic republic allows May Day speeches to be analyzed in terms of power relations, as well as interactions between language and power. In fact, discourse is here understood as a tool of power, by which a set of values and beliefs is articulated and circulated. If, as Norman Fairclough argued, discourse is a way for ideology to become evident and to be perceived as “common sense,” a discursive approach is useful to disentangle the different modes of workers’ representations by the IRI’s leaders, who were responding to occasional historical and economic challenges. More specifically, as Fairclough explained, “conventions routinely drawn up in discourse embody ideological assumptions which come to be taken as mere ‘common sense.’”Footnote ⁸ Thus, it is through the “ideological workings of language” that power is expressed. From a critical perspective, all the official speeches delivered for the Ruz-e Jahāni-ye Kārgar are to be interpreted as a representation of political power through political discourse, where actors are engaged in processes that are fully political, and they speak for the state.Footnote ⁹ Moreover, as discourse is here understood and analyzed as a changing linguistic process, this article will show the ideological shifts within the IRI’s dominant narrative. It will also explain how and why discourse intersected and involved what Fairclough defined as “social conditions” (where the discourse occurs and the wider context).Footnote ¹⁰ This means that understanding how workers were included in the official discourse and with what consequences, may also reveal a lot more about the dynamics of the state and workers’ interactions/struggles. As Fairclough put it, struggle can be revealed “not only in language in the obvious sense that it takes place in discourse as evidenced in language texts, but also over language.”Footnote ¹¹ Thus, what becomes relevant here is how discursive strategies were woven to the different imaginaries evoked and how political agents constructed facts through discourse. Moreover, the interaction between practices of language formulation and their premises, values, goals and potential consequences reveal the strategies employed to transform words into calls for action or to legitimize certain political choices. For instance, as will be explained later, while often addressing their interlocutors as “the people,” the Iranian authorities present themselves as problem-solvers, patrons, or agents who can guarantee security and welfare. The concept of mardom-e Irān—“people of Iran”—was in fact utilized many times over the years, carrying different meanings: people as a class, as a religious community, as a sovereign nation.

Therefore, in this article, discourse analysis will start from the construction of labor and workers, to further explore which features or qualities were attributed over time and through which frameworks certain claims were justified and expressed.Footnote ¹² Then, it will develop along vocabulary and lexicon connections that were used by IRI’s leaders in relation to the labor domain throughout the years. Finally, it will tackle the striking features within each May Day speech in terms of contents, relations and subjects: in other words, what is said, the relations of the people involved in discourse and which position they occupy.Footnote ¹³

Labor as a Manifestation of Allah, Workers as “Warriors” in the Islamic Domain

As this paper is concerned with the discursive representation of workers and labor, a crucial point to start this analysis is looking at the consolidation of the 1979 revolution and the Islamic Republic as a process. This process involved the factory and engaged in the transformation of the worker into a revolutionary homo islamicus, framing it within specific ideological patterns and references, which were comprehensible for all those belonging to the revolutionary corpus. The inherent language, logic and premises of the revolutionary discourse as a momentum to chase the shah and establish a new order of things were gradually constructed and readjusted.Footnote ¹⁴ This was the case with May Day. As the Islamic republic regarded itself as embodying genuine Islam, Ruz-e Jahāni-ye Kārgar—starting from 1979—was turned into a site of generation for militant discourses within the Islamic domain. Other political perspectives were de facto marginalized or rendered void by absorption, as for the assimilation of leftist historical symbols, such as those of social justice and class. It is worth dedicating a specific reflection on those narratives here, before starting with the analysis of the first May Day of the Islamic republic. In fact, workers’ rights, class struggle and social justice were all parts of the Marxist dominant discourses, which had developed throughout the decades before the revolution. The debate on class championed by the Iranian Left developed within the circles of the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party, formed in 1941, as well as within the guerrilla group and organization of Fedā ʿ yān-e Khalq and the Islamist Mojāhedin-e Khalq that emerged between 1965 and 1971, along with a Mojāhedin branch, Peykār (Struggle), born in 1979 and afterwards with Rāh-e Kārgar (Workers’ Path).Footnote ¹⁵ Nevertheless, theoretical approaches and methods of these organizations were different. If the Tudeh Party, since its foundation, presented a program of reforms and claims for workers’ rights, demanding redistribution of wealth, insurance and housing—as documented by scholars such as Abrahamian, Behrooz, Matin-Asgari and othersFootnote ¹⁶—the 1970s’ Marxist and Islamist guerrilla armed struggle exposed the cause of social justice, framing it in a more radical pattern fully involving the workers’ revolutionary potential. Furthermore, if, thanks to the Marxists’ contribution, the meaning of trade union activism in Iran had already developed in the 1940s, with the 1970s’ urban guerrillas a situation of warfare and public discourse of dissent strongly emerged.Footnote ¹⁷ Therefore, when the Islamic republic celebrated its first Workers’ Day, the political arena close to workers was diverse and complex. As mentioned above, a discursive war was going on. Overall, the discourse pertaining social justice and class struggle did not belong specifically to Khomeini and his followers.Footnote ¹⁸

On May 1979, in the aftermath of the revolution, Khomeini delivered a speech, which was recorded and broadcast on radio and TV. The day after, Ettelāʿāt published the entire “Imam’s message,” with the following headline standing out in the page: “Almighty God is the origin of labor.”

By defining labor as “a manifestation of God,” Khomeini dragged it into the religious sphere. Describing it as a sign of Allah, he attributed dignity to labor, which “is everywhere” as an inherent part of nature. Piety and universality permeated society—here conceived as a bigger factory where workers, kārgarān Footnote ²⁰—were presented as all the natural particles. Hence, everyone could be a worker, a “slave of God,” a Muslim, part of “the” biggest design. Moreover, the Supreme Guide proclaimed that “every day should be [considered] as workers’ day.”

As noted by Asef Bayat in his pioneer Workers and Revolution in Iran, what was stirring the crowds in the streets of Iran—according to Khomeini—was a struggle between mostaz ʿ afin and mostakbarin, oppressed and oppressors.Footnote ²¹ Workers were cast into this conflict, not as a conscious working class, but within the broader category of the downtrodden. Nevertheless, on the occasion of Ruz-e Kārgar 1980, in his annual speech, Khomeini explicitly mentioned the word “class” when addressing laborers: “Workers are the most valuable class [arzeshtarin tabaqeh] and the most beneficial group [sudmandtarin goruh] in the society.”Footnote ²²

Yet he soon specified that “no particular group or specific movement” could ever represent workers’ grievances, as the main goal was to cast workers under the Islamic umbrella and within the broader collectivity of the downtrodden. Hence, this was a strategy to defuse workers (together with some leftist groups such as the abovementioned Fedāʿyān, Mojāhedin and Peykār, who were still active in fueling protests) as a potential threat to the stability of the newborn IRI.Footnote ²³ Indeed, the rhetoric of the enemy behind the strikes and chaos over the country, mixing with an anti-imperialist narrative, was recurrent in this speech. One year after the revolution was accomplished, Khomeini’s admonishment was dedicated, once again, to ousting “traitors”:

When comparing “the enemies” to “foreign powers” and “arrogant agents,” Khomeini meant the interference in Iranian domestic affairs during the shah’s government.Footnote ²⁴ In his message for May Day 1981 he went even further, depicting plotters and “counterrevolutionaries” as “enemies of God,” therefore framing them in the realm of “infidels” (koffar). It was 12 Ordibehesht 1360 of the Iranian calendar and Jomhouri-e Eslāmi when the newspaper run by the Islamic Republican Party went on sale with the following headline, quoting Khomeini: “The ignorant small groups showed with their acts and their words that they are enemies of the people and enemies of God. They are amateur actors in the scene.”Footnote ²⁵ The subtitle, over a full-page picture, contained a warning for laborers: “Be aware to give your valuable services to our dear nation country. Do not be at the Americans’ service through these groups.”Footnote ²⁶

Khomeini was probably referring to the Mojāhedin and Fedāʿyān’s urban guerrilla actions occurring on those days. While casting all the different groups of the Iranian Left under the same generic word, goruhak-hā (subgroups), the Supreme Leader started a process of suppression of the peculiarities of each organization. The discursive goal of not pronouncing the groups’ names can be described as a tactic of minimizing them within blurring lines, while de facto silencing their actions.

Together with this anger against the enemy, Khomeini celebrated the “noble working class” (which was to be united and far from these groups). Moreover, praising it was to be considered not only as a religious duty, but also “national and public.” In fact, the rhetoric of nationalist unity began to appear along these lines. The reason lay behind the war with Iraq. In fact, stressing nationalist unity had served the goal of raising popular support for those recruited to the war front after Iraqi troops invaded Iran on 22 September 1980. The foreign element was constructed as antagonistic to the construction of the self. By establishing this dichotomy within the discourse, Khomeini outlined the “enemy’s profile as propagandist, despicable, liar, on America’s and Russia’s payrolls”:

Khomeini purposely inveighed against all rivals. He established two opposed camps, constructing the threat as coming from universities and rationalists: small groups “united against Iran and the Islamic republic.” Gazing closely at the context, it can be argued that he was targeting all those Marxists ideas that were circulating within the universities even before the revolution. The reason for such hatred lay in the fact that, through the Fedāʿyān and the Mojāhedin in particular, Marxist ideas spread within some factories:

During the first years after the revolution, the struggle against the Left within the factories was not a matter of discourse only. There was a real fight going on within and outside the workers’ councils (shurā) that had been established in many factories after 1978 as the outcomes of the strike committees, with the idea of control from below in the factory.Footnote ²⁹ This conception of bottom-up management of labor issues began to vanish, as the political space for the councils’ radical demands and workers’ participation in management became increasingly restricted.Footnote ³⁰ A purge of leftist opponents among workers started and open warfare was also conducted in the streets, particularly in summer 1980.Footnote ³¹ This was the beginning of what Nomani and Behdad defined as a slow process of “deproletarianization of labor.”Footnote ³² Therefore, along with discursive mechanisms of delegitimization of the Marxist groups—such as those mentioned above—repression was widely employed. In fact, between February 1979 and June 1981, a massive operation against opponents was carried out: in twenty-eight months, 497 people were sentenced to death, classified as “counterrevolutionaries.”Footnote ³³ Another relevant transformation aiming at disempowering workers and gaining bottom-up control of the workplaces loomed within the factories: by 1981, the majority of secular shuras were dismantled. In other words, workers’ councils, which in some cases managed the workplaces, were eventually brought under the state umbrella.Footnote ³⁴ The Islamic Associations were established and assumed de facto the discursive control of workers’ organizations. Beyond the Workers’ House, Khāneh-ye Kārgar, sponsored by the state, no other independent institution could represent workers.Footnote ³⁵ However, it was a combination of factors that gradually allowed the Islamic republic to consolidate itself: not discourse alone, nor ideology or repression only. Welfare policies represented one of the IRI’s early preoccupations, as they also constituted a tool for gaining consensus among workers and preventing their discontent and consequently their mobilization.Footnote ³⁶ At that time, as for the May Day 1981 speech, the discursive strategy was dual. On the one hand, Khomeini was instilling a sense of danger and need for defense, while conveying messages of urgency and anger. On the other hand, he presented the self against the other, so workers as “brothers and sisters,” “great champion people,” “Iran’s dorsal spine [the country's pillar],” against the enemies:

Work as a Weapon against Capitalism and Imperialism for the Community of Believers

Along with a discursive process of reframing workers from a “class” to “brothers and sisters” within the broader group of the mostaz ʿ afin, Khomeini absorbed the leftist anti-capitalist narrative under the Islamic umbrella, while the IRI began widening access to social welfare for those who had been excluded before 1979.Footnote ³⁸ Indeed, the Supreme Leader’s dictum, “One day of you, workers, is more valuable than a capitalist’s whole life,” framed the narrative of labor within the Islamic republic starting from May Day 1982. The maxim would appear several times in the following celebrations.Footnote ³⁹ Nevertheless, the core values of this slogan lost momentum over the years, as economic and historical events started changing the IRI’s attitude towards capital and production, particularly with the fatigue of the war and its repercussions. The speech of 11 Ordibehesht 1361 marked the end of Khomeini’s messages for Workers’ Day. He once again warned workers that they should be circumspect and watchful, feeding the rhetoric of a conspiracy: “You won’t see any capitalists or those who occupied honorable places [anymore]. Be sure that you do what you can.”Footnote ⁴⁰

If the Imam Khomeini’s notice leaped out from the right side of Jomhouri-e Eslāmi’s front-page, for the first time a full speech of Ali Khamenei as the president of the IRI took up the opposite side. The headline was eloquent: “The weapon [salāh] of workers is labor.”Footnote ⁴¹

For the first time—after almost two years of war with Iraq—the word production, towlid, entered the regime’s vocabulary, associated with labor as a “moment of prayer.” This represented a first important rupture since the revolution. In fact, the country was experiencing a crisis of productivity and the IRI’s leaders wanted to take ideological control of this moment, framing labor as a “religious duty.”Footnote ⁴² Likewise, the term martyrdom, through blood (which is immediately connected to the tragedy of Karbala,) penetrated the IRI’s discourse on workers: “Working hours are the moments of prayer and the tribute to the martyrs and the poor people and the downtrodden. So, wasting every moment of this work is like invading the rights of poor people and insulting martyrs’ blood.”Footnote ⁴³

Another element marked a shift of focus in this speech, as Khamenei clearly mentioned management that was not to be opposed. First, he urged workers to report disorder or “misconduct.” Second, he indicated to workers the path to obedience, recommending not to hinder or meddle in managers’ activities.

To eradicate Marxist symbolism from labor and to end the appeal of leftist ideas within the factories, the president: (1) reaffirmed the concept of labor connected to Islam; and (2) specifically blamed those who conceived workers as a working class and not a “ommat,” a community of believers:

Marginalizing Workers’ Day: The Path to Economic Liberalization

By the late 1980s, what was propagandized as the day belonging to workers and the downtrodden, kārgarān va mostaz ʿ afin, was slowly dismissed as a minor event within the logic of consolidation of the Islamic republic. May Day lost its grandeur in the post-revolutionary discourse. Why? Khomeini died and his modalities of framing class struggle slowly started to be dismissed. The legacies of the war had generated economic problems, as production was low. The leftist threat was not perceived as being as dangerous as it was in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, because a combination of repression and discursive mechanisms had in part isolated it.

The media coverage of May Day decreased. Articles on the annual celebration were often relegated to more modest spaces or at the bottom of front pages. Official speeches were delegated to ministers. Ruz-e Jahāni-ye Kārgar 1986 provided an example of this process of transformation. Rafsanjani, at that time speaker of the parliament, sent his message for May Day, which was published on the front page of Ettelāʿāt on 11 Ordibehesht 1365 (Persian calendar), along with an almost half-page picture standing out under the headline: “Legions of workers for the International Workers Day.”Footnote ⁴⁶

By evoking an imaginary of war, Rafsanjani associated the notion of laborers’ strain to the pain of all those Iranians suffering their deaths on the frontline, while struggling to give freedom to Iran from the yoke of conflict with Baghdad. The Karbala paradigm was kept as a catalyst, as the cult of martyrdom affected the visual discourse through graffiti and posters as well:Footnote ⁴⁷ “Workers’ sweat is combined with martyrs’ blood in the way of freedom and love to make the country free.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Furthermore, what emerged from these words was the discourse of the uniqueness of Iran as compared to “other countries,” where hard labor was falling short in giving rewards to workers.

When Rafsanjani took the helm of the presidency in 1989, it was seven weeks after Khomeini’s death.Footnote ⁴⁹ The war with Iraq had ended less than a year before. The share of the Iranian working class that were employed had declined since the revolution.Footnote ⁵⁰ The population was rapidly increasing.Footnote ⁵¹ Rafsanjani named his first cabinet the “dowlat-e sāzandegi,” the reconstruction.Footnote ⁵² He “restructured” the Iranian economy, as he tried to stimulate capital accumulation. By implementing new liberal measures, the president attempted to raise productivity and deeply affected the labor market, with inevitable consequences for workers and their bargaining power.Footnote ⁵³ Without ever labeling his policies “neoliberal” and keeping his narrative aligned to revolutionary slogans, Rafsanjani aimed at increasing investment, improving the rate of employment and Iranian welfare. It can be argued that the Islamic republic effectively customized the dictum “produce and consume.” In fact, terms such as “development,” “economic production” and “productivity” pervaded the IRI’s new discourse. The idea of workers and the working class was utterly reformulated. Neither of the words tabaqeh or mostaz ʿ afin were adopted to address laborers in the president’s message in a meeting with workers’ representatives a day before Ruz-e Kārgar, but the concept of working stratum, gheshr-e kārgar, or working force, niru-ye kārgar, entered Rafsanjani’s narrative: “Working stratum [gheshr-e kārgar] is one of the most loyal social strata: it is loyal to Islam and to the revolution. We appreciate the working force. This day [Workers’ Day] has a big value and an important role in the whole world: the public opinion needs to comprehend workers’ rights.”Footnote ⁵⁴

As he needed production to rise and dissent to be eradicated—while the reconstruction period was putting the IRI under pressure—Rafsanjani couched workers’ rights in a new ideological frame, which was overlooked during May Day speeches until that moment: the legal element. Why? Almost eleven years after the revolution, the Islamic republic did not have a labor law. Although the first draft of a new law was submitted in 1982, only six years later, in 1988, the parliament passed the final version. The text was then ratified in 1989 by the Islamic Consultancy Assembly in 1989, and eventually approved by the Expediency Council in 1990.Footnote ⁵⁵ Rafsanjani’s government sold the approval as one of its achievements, using a collective we: “We are working to approve this Labor law and [ …] soon a group able to approve a Labor law conforming to the Islamic system will be formed.”Footnote ⁵⁶

The economic dynamics were changing, and the downtrodden were no longer to be central to the IRI’s narrative. In fact, sketching the contours of the myth of success, the president invoked workers’ stock options (sahām) within the logic of organization and management of the factory, as reported by Kayhān.Footnote ⁵⁷ By then, the control from below period of the shurā seemed to be far away. Moreover, years of state-controlled-only unions have passed. Within this context, a group of workers chanted slogans in support of Rafsanjani. This of course represented another discursive strategy and a propaganda move. Yet it also marked a shift from the past: “Workers are awake and they hate West and East,” (Kārgarān bidārand, az garb o sharq bizarand); “Life to Khamenei and enduring Hashemi” (Khamenei zende bād, Hashemi payānde bād); “Hashemi Hashemi, we will protect and support you” (Hashemi Hashemi hemāyatat mikonim).Footnote ⁵⁸Another change that is worth noting here is that May Day gradually stopped being central to the rhetoric of the IRI, as the social justice and class struggle narratives were no longer useful to Rafsanjani’s projects.

Already in that year, Rafsanjani left the floor to Hossein Kamali, minister of labor. Kamali, on the one hand, reinforced the anti-capitalist rhetoric associated with May Day by the Islamic republic authorities, neglecting any form of coercion over Iranian workers.Footnote ⁵⁹ On the other hand, he presented to workers a future as productivity machines: “Workers should work more for this year.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Sanitizing the discourse of any connection to the leftist realm, Rafsanjani’s minister of labor redefined once again the notion of workers and their attributes:

Upon closer inspection of the speech, the double-layered narrative of anti-capitalism and praise of productivity was maintained to underpin a new argument: produce for self-sufficiency and to reconstruct the country after the war. The revolutionary element resisted more strongly than the religious. Claims of victory and evocation of development and success after “hard work” were adopted as tools of mobilization, because the IRI needed supporters and human resources to reconstruct the country after the war:

On May Day 1990, Kayhān—among other major newspapers—published Rafsanjani’s directives to transform factories into sites of massive production. The religious dimension of discourse again came into sight, through the image of “believers’ hands.” It appeared to be far away from the claims for the mostaz ʿ afin as expressions of militant discontent, as with Khomeini’s first May Day messages: “One of the goals of the Islamic Republic is to give the whole industry of the country into the hands of believers, who are the ones the revolution belongs to.”Footnote ⁶³

The appeal to the revolutionary realm became even stronger, before escalating into the final motivating formula: more efforts, more production. By that time, the neoliberal motto of the IRI’s presidency could be summarized as such: “Wasting energy and time and working less, especially in this situation we are experiencing now, sometimes is unforgivable. It is a pity for the pure blood of martyrs of Islam.”Footnote ⁶⁴

Furthermore, what is relevant to the context of this paper is that Rafsanjani—while invoking the professionalization of labor and keeping repressed any form of protests or organization in the factories—institutionalizing the cult of hard work as a principle crossing industry, the economy and politics: “Labor is one of the most important principles for economic independence in the industry and in politics […] Authorities should increase educational and professional quality of workers.”Footnote ⁶⁵

By 1992, Rafsanjani’s economic liberalization policies were launched.Footnote ⁶⁶ The dynamics of state‒labor interactions were again changing, while workers as an organized group almost ceased being addressed in the official discourse. The IRI sided with certain management mechanisms, as the 1990 Labor Law showed: (1) the rationalization of the labor process along with fewer guarantees for workers, with almost nothing for the unemployed; and (2) the introduction of temporary contracts.Footnote ⁶⁷ Therefore, it can be argued that this whole process could be realized because workers were disempowered and de facto divided through several strategies employed along with discourse.

Progressively, the implementation of these strategies and policies served to strip the concepts of social justice (edālat ejtemā ʿ i) and class conflict of their meanings. The following speech from Workers’ Day 1994 was part of this process:

Moving from the particular to a broader context, a few disruptions may be isolated. The president was among the oil workers of Naft-e Pars-e Tehran. He was speaking to those considered “the best” of the country (kārgarān-e nemuneh), waiting to be awarded during the Ruz-e kārgar celebrations. In the year he was giving the speech, oil workers received a proposal: to transform their contracts from blue to white collar and take a promotion.Footnote ⁶⁹ These measures were integrated in a discourse that de facto ended class antagonism.

Obedience to revolutionary and religious instructions served as key elements of discursive transition within this phase of the IRI. Martyrdom as an imaginary of sacrifice and collective defense of the symbols of the revolution served to bridge the divide between a context that was rapidly being liberalized and the overarching ideological pro-mostaz ʿ afin narrative that was still in place. In this space of difference, workers emerged as “society’s force of production.”

Eventually, workers were advised how to behave better in the factory and outside it: “Keep your attitude to work with responsibility and respect.”Footnote ⁷¹ This last sentence, while officially promoting the maintenance of a certain etiquette, also reinforced a top-down characterization of the IRI’s narrative that went along repression and increasing legal insecurity of labor. The restrictive articulation of workers’ code of behavior in the workplace challenged the reality of unrest that erupted all over the country during Rafsanjani’s presidency. Between 1991 and 1994, the IRI experienced a series of protests against the government’s neoliberal agenda. Workers’ unrest intensified, along with that from the urban poor.Footnote ⁷² Grievances were a reaction against inflation and its effects on wages and purchasing power. After years of pursuing an agenda meant to liberalize the currency market, the riāl had dropped from 1,800 to 3,200 to a dollar. In 1994, Rafsanjani did not pronounce his official message for Ruz-e Kārgar. As a strategy to neutralize recent outbreaks of protest and to reduce once again the importance of May Day, the Supreme Leader Khamenei gave his May Day speech in 1997, merging Workers’ and Teachers’ Day into one moment.

The Islamic-Iranian Rhetoric of Cultural Liberalization Addressing the Middle Class

The process of dissolution class struggle and social justice narratives and needs was almost completed, despite the real economic crisis that Iran was experiencing. The Islamic republic was about to re-modulate its discourse towards the masses and particularly on the middle classes,Footnote ⁷³ which re-emerged during Rafsanjani’s two-term presidency. Mohammad Khatami won the elections in 1997 and he opened a new phase for the IRI, where the Islamic discourse merged with that of national identity.Footnote ⁷⁴

The Labor Party—connected to the Khāneh-ye Kārgar, Worker’s House—supported the president, together with technocrats and intellectuals.Footnote ⁷⁵ The spirit and tone of official rhetoric transformed. Words such as downtrodden (mostaz ʿ afin), the world’s arrogant people (estekbar-e jahāni) and martyrdom (shahed) left room for concepts such as participation (moshārekat), dialogue (goftogu) and civil society (jāme ʿ eh -ye madani). Workers were dispersed in this latter and broader group by being addressed as jāme ʿ eh-ye kārgari (workers’ society) or working force (niru-ye kārgar). The term tabaqeh class completely disappeared from May Day speeches. Progress and production became recurrent in the new reformist narrative, resembling “creativity.”

The call for participation was exalted by the repetition of “we” as an inclusive pronoun expressing closeness and sense of belonging. It also mutated into a direct message against any potential class conflict between workers and managers, as workers began to be addressed as jāme ʿ eh-ye kārgari: “No factor for the society of workers [jāme ʿ eh -ye kārgari] and for production is worse than contrasts existing between the working force [niru-ye kārgar] and management.”Footnote ⁷⁷ Laborers were labeled as “the axis of life [mover-e hayāt] of our society,” and glorified as “the most revolutionary, the most indefatigable.” For the first time in post-revolutionary Iran, the national dimension strongly entered May Day speeches, as workers were defined as “patriots.”

Furthermore, while giving “progress of economy” equal footing with “safety from perils and dangers,” Khatami devoted the last sentences of his message to a general labor “justice” (edālat), without referring to social justice and or class conflict.Footnote ⁷⁸

Nevertheless, compared to Rafsanjani’s mandate, the new president was not concerned exclusively with a metamorphosis of markets and a relaunch of the Iranian economy. He led Iran to a cultural turn where—together with words such as “democracy” (demokrāsi) or “equality” (barābari)—a renegotiation of spaces was carried out. Within this frame of new practices, labor activism found its channels to develop.Footnote ⁷⁹ Yet the formal legal framework and general overview of the phenomenon did not change substantially, as formal and informal networks of control over workers’ activities were kept in place.Footnote ⁸⁰ For instance, over Khatami’s presidency, Worker’s House continued to be under the Islamic Left, as part of the apparatus.Footnote ⁸¹

Conservative factions exploited Khatami’s attitude towards civil society and the intellectual middle classes to gradually attract the support of those masses that had been neglected by the liberal discourse. Additionally, the Supreme leader Khamenei, on May Day 1998, reaffirmed his support to the mostaz ʿ afin and to labor as a “religious duty” for economic independence.Footnote ⁸² As Iran was experiencing an intellectual opening to western ideas, Khamenei warned workers and teachers against secular and anti-revolutionary “enemies” who were exploiting culture in order to allegedly manipulate them: “Today enemies just have no way and you workers, together with teachers and all the people, should pay attention and be aware. […] Enemies are using culture to surround us, so they use media, newspapers, magazines and TV against our revolution and its concepts.”Footnote ⁸³ Within this context of political acrimony, it is interesting to note how Khatami struck back. The day after, the president—attending a meeting with teachers—sent a powerful message to those with a conservative view of the society: “We cannot think that every cultural belief coming from the past is sacred and [we cannot think] that someone who has a critical point is unreligious or a foreign agent.”Footnote ⁸⁴

Despite this example of potent tenor in presidential rhetoric, Khatami’s agenda of “political development”—meant to empower “civil society” and to boost “citizen participation”—referred to a heterogeneous group of people and was not framed in terms of class.Footnote ⁸⁵ This was one of the reasons why Khatami’s liberal understanding of the Islamic republic overlooked workers in terms of specific collectivity.Footnote ⁸⁶

Strikes and scattered workers’ collective actions broke out all over the country between the end of 1997 and early 1998.Footnote ⁸⁷ One year later, on May Day 1999, president Khatami used his words to encourage workers—once again—to boost Iran’s economy. The same neoliberal narrative, overlooking social justice for the sake of cultural reforms and “progress” was taking shape: “Our economy needs evolution and progress. […] We need to take a fundamental step further for the economy […] we experienced drop of incomes of the government because of oil prices. Prices decreased in terms of exports.”Footnote ⁸⁸

This presidential speech revealed a significant detachment from the past. In fact, several layers of discourse are involved: tone, structure and goals. They mark a paradigm shift from the invincible Islamic republic, whose authorities so far had never openly admitted to being in trouble or always blamed an “enemy”: “We should not lie to people. [We should] not mention positive aspects and exaggerate them. I must admit that we have some problems. Salaries are low, our health system does not work efficiently enough, but we strive with honesty and trust to cope with and solve these problems.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Although talking on Ruz-e Kārgar, Khatami effectively spoke to a broader audience of “workers, investors and producers.” It was to an even larger group, “the people,” that he addressed his demands for more efforts in the spirit of the triad “production, entrepreneurship and investment” that emerged as new contours of the factory in the IRI’s narrative. All these components were woven together into an inclusive “we.”

While Khatami’s approach kept the same spirit as during the first term, in his second term labor issues gradually disappeared from the front pages. Particularly the reformist newspapers, founded after Khatami’s election, such as Khordād or Moshākerat, largely overlooked social exclusion and social justice.Footnote ⁹¹ Ruz-e kārgar slowly lost its centrality for the IRI’s leaders, as social justice and class struggle almost abandoned the grievances of the reformists, deemed as not functional for the Republic at that moment. Furthermore, while the space for labor activism widened, it stayed on a level of informality, as the repression of workers’ protests did not really stop.

Justice, the Allegiance of “the People” and Repression: Ahmadinejad’s Contradictions

Give revolution back to the downtrodden, the benefits of oil revenues to “the people,” social justice to urban poor: with these key promises Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections in 2005 against former president Rafsanjani, after the reformists had held the reins of the government for eight years. Social justice (edālat-e ejtemā ʿ i) was a recurrent theme in the president’s narrative, even though over his first term the space for political activism was massively eroded, as strikes were met by suppression and arrests.Footnote ⁹² Unpaid wages and unemployment, following years of privatization, had exasperated laborers whereas Ahmadinejad’s loyal followers took control over the Workers’ House.Footnote ⁹³

As will be argued later in this paragraph, an evident contradiction between reports and historical chronicles on the one hand, and the discourse in favor of “the people” on the other, loomed under the populist new dimension of the IRI.

Talking to both workers and teachers on Ruz-e kārgar 2006, Ahmadinejad proclaimed workers (together with educators, thus not as a distinct group) “the next priority of the government,” as Ettelāʿāt put in the headline on its front page.Footnote ⁹⁴ The order of priorities utterly shifted in his narrative, where “unity” of “the people” and work, along with loyalty/faith, replaced the core role of the religious dimension.

Leaving behind the official narrative of entrepreneurship, social issues and unemployment permeated Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric: “Solve the economic problem and create job opportunities is the absolute goal of my government. Our government is here for workers and it is honored to be at your service, dear workers.”Footnote ⁹⁶

Always addressing “the people,” the reproduction of a discourse focusing on dangerous enemies, seen as a threat to Iran, became instrumental to justify the government’s problems as “obstacles” created by others.Footnote ⁹⁷

Nevertheless, the historical context showed a discrepancy between Ahmadinejad’s words, constructed facts and reality. First, the ostentatious solidarity with workers: between January and February 2006 hundreds of bus drivers, striking in Tehran, were severely repressed and arrested.Footnote ⁹⁸ Second, the imaginary of a government “at workers’ service” was at odds with the evidence of “blank contracts,” according to which laborers—overwhelmed by unemployment due to high inflation rate—de facto were compelled to abandon their grievances regarding wages, working shifts, etc.Footnote ⁹⁹ Furthermore, in the same year, it is relevant to note what Iran Khodro workers wrote in a letter to the Annual Conference of the International Labor Organization, lamenting the lack of labor rights and independence:

As a harsher economic crisis was looming, sources of discontent spread throughout factories and labor units.Footnote ¹⁰¹ On May Day 2007 Ahmadinejad urged workers to increase production, phrasing it as a request driven by the will to “develop” and “build the country.”Footnote ¹⁰² Opening his speech, he stressed labor and toilers as the most important elements for structuring a country: “Workers build the foundations of the society, the future of the country and establish a happy life in the society. We have progressed in this direction, but we have not reached a desirable position yet.”Footnote ¹⁰³

Then the president concentrated on encouraging production and pushing laborers to work more: “If we want to build the country we need to work. Today we are experiencing tremendous global transformations, and we are seeing that the world is rapidly evolving. Focusing on Iran’s development, we are obliged to build our country.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In order to achieve his goals, Ahmadinejad reproduced the logics of belonging, by listing three key factors that allow a country to progress, such as (1) unity, (2) faith and (3) justice:

Moreover, through a process of othering, the president dissolved the notion of class division, by referring to “employers, managers and all the people of Iran”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ as all being part of the nation (mellat).Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Therefore, workers became instrumental resources of propaganda, in a precise historical moment when the IRI was suffering economic difficulties because of western sanctions.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The president de facto inserted workers into the broader category of human beings. This means that workers reappeared as the most important audience for the president compared to Khatami’s times, but not as a class, despite Ahmadinejad’s official rhetoric portraying him as the workers’ protector.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

Characterizing relations between workers and employers, Ahmadinejad stimulated and supported the idea of an “atmosphere of empathy.” Thus, he denied and de facto erased any chance for class struggle, by remarking that

Housing was the only workers’ demand mentioned in this presidential speech, as better conditions had been requested for years within and outside of the factories. Nevertheless, Ahmadinejad chose to procrastinate on this topic and shift the responsibility to single ministries. Why? This bureaucratization of labor issues served as a tool to defuse a social mechanism that was about to explode.

Conversely, praising workers in May Day speeches, ignoring strikes, while practically repressing spaces of freedom: this was the three-sided strategy adopted by Ahmadinejad towards the end of his first term. While reiterating the concept of loyalty to his government, in May Day 2008, the president used Khomeini’s phrase (“Ruz-e jahāni kārgar is everyday”). At the same time, he sketched once again the contours and definition of the worker as a human being:

Along with applauding production and productivity, Ahmadinejad combined a strong criticism of capitalism. He described labor “as a social act carried out for the perfection of the society”:

Hence, the president disentangled his criticism of capitalism by: (1) presenting the worker and the employer on a “complementary” level and not framing this relation as class driven;Footnote ¹¹³ and (2) rediscovering the Islamic dimension and interpreting workers’ behavior towards managers through a three-dimensional lens including the populist, the Islamic and the revolutionary.

Ahmadinejad’s resentment against the capitalist organization of work reached its peak in the speech pronounced three days before Ruz-e Kārgar 2009, almost a month before the Green Movement demonstrations. As the 12 June elections were looming, the incumbent president was concerned to broaden his basis of consensus, by promoting a “culture of labor” against a “culture of capitalism.” He recalled the imaginary of workers and employers as “parts of the same system”: