Council of the Left: An Iranian Experiment

On 10 January 2026, in Stockholm, Sweden, a number of Iranian Marxist parties and organizations are holding a conference convened by the “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces” – an alliance that today is one of the few stable frameworks of collaboration among segments of the revolutionary left in exile. The council first introduced itself in 2018, after a joint conference in the same city, through a statement titled “A Socialist Alternative Is Necessary and Possible” – a text that explicitly called for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a council-based socialist order in Iran.

This conference is more than just another diaspora event. It offers a window into the current state of a significant part of Iran’s socialist left, its relationship with social movements inside the country, and its attempt to build a socialist bloc against competing right-wing projects: monarchists, liberal republicans, and “campist” forces that still defend the Islamic Republic and its regional allies.

Post-“Jina” Iran and the Real Weight of Socialist Discourse

From the late 2010s up to today, Iranian politics has been shaped by repeated waves of mass unrest: the uprising of December 2017–January 2018, the bloody protests of November 2019, and then the nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in autumn 2022. Despite brutal repression, all three moments carried the same core message: the majority of protesters no longer believe in reforming the Islamic system, nor do they trust right-wing alternatives that bank on restoring the monarchy or cutting deals with the security apparatus.

Socio-economically, Iran is stuck in a structural crisis of sanctions-hit, rent-based capitalism. Human rights and labor reports indicate that between 2024 and 2025, more than 1,300 labor and professional strikes, protests, and gatherings were recorded across the country – putting Iran among the most protest-intensive labor scenes in the region.

Different sections of the working class and the poor – from oil, gas, and steel workers to teachers, pensioners, nurses, and hospital staff – have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent years. In its annual report for 1402, the media foundation Radio Zamaneh calls workers the “steady pillar of resistance and protest,” showing that a large share of these actions revolve around unpaid wages, job security, and the right to independent organization.

Alongside this, the women’s movement – especially after the state murder of Jina/Mahsa Amini – has transformed the face of Iran’s streets. The de facto defeat of the compulsory hijab law in many cities is not the result of formal legal reform, but of the day-to-day defiance of millions of women and young men. This defiance is not “just” about culture or lifestyle; it is a direct rejection of body-centered religious authority and an assault on one of the regime’s core pillars.

Inside prisons, political prisoners have also pushed forward a new form of resistance through the “Tuesdays against Execution” campaign – weekly hunger strikes in dozens of prisons – which by autumn 2025 had reached more than 90 weeks and at least 54 facilities.

In Kurdistan, the fusion of a national movement with a socialist tradition has deep roots. In recent years, the “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces in Kurdistan” and allied organizations have repeatedly helped call general strikes against executions and repression. In June 2025, they also held their third conference in Stockholm.

Across all these fronts, the imprint of socialist discourse is visible: in the radical statements of workers at Haft-Tappeh and Ahvaz Steel, in the declarations of teachers and pensioners, in the anti-capitalist slogans during the Jina uprising, and in the anti-execution movement’s insistence on “life” not as a return to normality, but as a demand for equal conditions of existence. Many of these texts draw their language and horizon from the communist tradition, even when their authors are not members of any formal left party.

For non-Iranian readers, it is important to see that this “social left” – a loose network of radical activists in labor, women’s, student, and minority movements – is much broader than the official parties. At the same time, parties still function as significant channels for producing analysis and political organization. The “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces” is an attempt to bring these two levels – party and movement – closer together.

What Is the Council, and Where Did It Come From?

The “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces” was formed in September 2018 through a conference in Stockholm. Six Marxist currents – the Communist Fadaian Unity, the Communist Party of Iran, the Worker-Communist Party of Iran–Hekmatist, the Road of the Worker Organization, the Minority Fadaian Organization, and the “Minority Core” – issued a joint statement titled “A Socialist Alternative Is Necessary and Possible.”

That text, which still serves as the formal basis of the council’s cooperation, rests on several key points:

• Defining the Islamic Republic as a capitalist, theocratic, and repressive regime that must be overthrown through a social revolution;
• Insisting on dismantling all bourgeois power structures – from the Revolutionary Guards to the clerical apparatus and state bureaucracy – rather than simply changing the government within the current constitution;
• Supporting the direct rise to power of the working class through councils, general assemblies, and elected bodies in workplaces and neighborhoods as the basis of a socialist order;
• Drawing a clear line against any “top-down alternative-making” – from governments-in-exile to Western think tanks – that designs Iran’s future over the heads of workers and the poor.

In terms of Iran’s political history, the council is trying to revive parts of the communist legacy of the 1960s and 1970s – from the Fedai guerrillas to Komala and various “worker-communist” tendencies – in a new form. Most of its member organizations now operate from exile, but they still maintain networks of supporters and veteran cadres inside Iran, particularly in Kurdistan, parts of the labor movement, and among radical intellectuals.

In 2023 the council’s composition changed with the entry of the “Socialist Workers’ Unity” – a group rooted in the worker-communist tradition that has presented itself since the late 1990s as an independent current stressing organic ties to the working class and the necessity of a “socialist alternative.”

Over the past seven years, the council’s activities have included:

• Publishing dozens of joint statements on labor strikes and protests, execution waves, the Jina uprising, repression in Kurdistan, and even massacres in Sudan – using a clear socialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist language and emphasizing internationalist solidarity;
• Organizing public and online seminars and meetings, including May Day and International Women’s Day events in Stockholm and other European cities, with the participation of independent activists and representatives of social movements;
• Creating and running “Alternative Council TV” – a joint satellite and online channel broadcast via Yahsat that regularly airs programs on Iran’s political situation, labor protests, and Marxist analysis.

For many Iranian left activists, the importance of this council is not just in its membership numbers or organizational reach. What matters is that, unlike many “left unity” projects of the past two decades, this collaboration – despite serious theoretical and historical differences among its members – has survived and developed instead of collapsing after one photo-op conference.

The Council and Social Movements

The introductory text announcing the Stockholm conference highlights the growth of left discourse in Iran’s social movements, and argues that the collapse of reformism and parts of the right-wing opposition has objectively pushed sectors of society toward the left.

If we read this alongside available data, a more complex picture emerges:

• At the level of demands, many key goals of current movements – abolishing the death penalty, the right to independent organization, free education and healthcare, gender equality, and the end of compulsory hijab – have long been articulated in the minimum programs of left parties and currents.
• At the level of struggle forms, the use of general assemblies, multi-day strikes, solidarity networks between workers and their families, and the central role of women in front-line action all clearly echo international labor and socialist traditions.
• At the level of political language, the statements of campaigns such as “Tuesdays against Execution” or the struggles of Haft-Tappeh sugar workers frequently employ concepts like “working class,” “structural corruption of capitalism,” “privatization,” and “plunder of public resources” in a way that draws directly on left vocabulary.

But none of this automatically means that the organized left – including the council’s member forces – has achieved political hegemony within these movements. There are at least three serious constraints:

1. Geographical and security distance: Most party cadres live in exile. Building open, structured links with activists inside Iran is extremely costly in terms of repression, as the state routinely labels any such connection as “collaboration with overthrow groups.”
2. Fragmentation of the social left: Many radical activists inside deliberately avoid formal ties to traditional parties, partly because of the traumatic repression of the 1980s, and partly due to mistrust of exiled party structures. They often speak a socialist language, but do not see themselves as part of the “party left.”
3. Competition with two kinds of right: On one side, monarchist and liberal-republican opposition groups with significant financial and media resources in the West; on the other, sections of what is sometimes called the “Axis of Resistance left” in Iran, which, in the name of anti-imperialism, effectively defend the Islamic Republic’s regional policies and, at best, stayed silent during the Jina uprising.

Against this background, the council has tried to bridge some of these gaps through a few tactics:

• Shared media presence via Alternative Council TV and programs such as debates on “The Tasks and Position of Left Forces in the Current Political Situation,” which explicitly focus on the left’s relationship to labor, women’s, and student movements;
• Joint statements at key moments, for example in support of nationwide labor strikes, in defense of workers facing execution, and in solidarity with campaigns inside prisons. These texts aim to echo the language and demands of the movements themselves, rather than reducing everything to generic slogans;
• Regional cooperation, such as working with left forces in Iranian Kurdistan to call general strikes against executions – an effort that creates a specifically “trans-regional” dynamic within Iran’s borders by linking the nationwide uprising to the Kurdish national-social movement.

Even so, internal assessments by the council acknowledge that its impact on the overall political balance is still not proportionate to the level of crisis the regime is facing or the depth of popular unrest. They argue that both “qualitative” (strategy and policy production) and “quantitative” (expanding activist networks and audience reach) growth are necessary.

From Declarations to a Real Roadmap?

The conference planned for 10 January 2026 in Stockholm is explicitly framed under a three-part title: “Changing Political Conditions, Social Movements, and the Position and Role of the Left.”

For a non-Iranian reader, that title raises three central questions that will likely define the conference discussions:

1. What exactly are these “changing political conditions”?
   The Islamic Republic is facing a multi-layered crisis of economics, ecology, and legitimacy, while trying to secure its survival through intensified repression, new waves of privatization, and an aggressive regional policy. At the same time, right-wing opposition forces – above all the monarchist current – are working to present themselves, through lobbying in Western capitals and mainstream media, as the “natural alternative” for Iran’s future. The Iranian left counters that without radical steps in the areas of property, democracy, social justice, and secularism, no transition out of this crisis will be stable.
2. What is the role of social movements, and how should the left be present within them?
   Data shows that even during the harshest phases of repression after the Jina uprising, labor, sectoral, and local protests have continued – from strikes in oil, petrochemicals, and steel to recurring actions by teachers and nurses.
   At the same time, women and youth in streets and universities continue to pay the price of resistance by defying the compulsory hijab law and confronting security forces on campus. For the Stockholm conference, the key question is: how can these different lines of struggle – class-based, gendered, ethnic, and generational – be consciously woven together in ways that go beyond episodic protest and take shape as councils, nationwide organizations, and a working-class political party?
3. What is the specific role of the council itself and its allies?
   The documents tied to this conference put forward several practical directions:
   • Expanding cooperation between member parties and a broader spectrum of unaffiliated and independent left activists;
   • Building stable links with councils and solidarity committees in different countries that have formed around Iran-related struggles;
   • Upgrading existing media – from Alternative Council TV to websites and social networks – so they not only inform, but also create space for strategic debate between activists inside and outside the country.

At the same time, the entry of the Socialist Workers’ Unity into the council – a group whose statements emphasize the need for “Iranian socialism to emerge as a contender for power” – has raised expectations that the Stockholm conference will move beyond general affirmations and toward a more concrete roadmap: for example, on how to build nationwide workers’ coordination, how to support strikes in practice, and how socialists could intervene if and when a breakdown or transition of power occurs.

Why This Conference Matters

From the outside, the “Iranian opposition scene” is often reduced to more visible right-wing figures – monarchists and well-connected lobby groups in Western capitals. But anyone trying to understand Iran’s real social dynamics will misread the situation if they ignore the socialist bloc that has formed around the Council for Cooperation, even if this bloc is still less visible in mainstream media and institutions.

A few points are particularly relevant for non-Iranian observers:

• Unlike some segments of the “global left” who, in the name of anti-imperialism, end up defending the Islamic Republic and its regional allies, these forces draw a line both against global capitalism and against the Islamist power structure in Iran. In other words, they are anti-imperialist and anti-theocratic at the same time.
• They treat civil liberties – abolishing the death penalty, gender equality, freedom of expression and association – not as “secondary issues” to be postponed until after some geopolitical question is solved, but as integral to the socialist project itself.
• In their documents and media, they repeatedly insist that without an organized working class, and without its organic connection to women’s, student, and ethnic minority movements, no durable transition to freedom and equality is possible – a lesson they draw from the failure of the 1979 revolution and three decades of reformist experiments.

Seen in this light, the Stockholm 2026 conference can be read as an important testing ground for the Iranian socialist left’s capacity to answer questions that go far beyond Iran’s borders:

• How do you build a socialist alternative during a transition from authoritarian rule without falling under the shadow of imperial powers or religious reaction?
• What mechanisms can ensure that councils, assemblies, and mass organizations of workers and ordinary people are not sidelined after the fall of a regime and replaced simply by party elites and technocrats?
• And how can socialism, radical secularism, and gender equality be woven together in a way that can actually win hegemony in a society like Iran – young, urbanizing, and ethnically diverse?

The “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces” claims that its answer lies in the strategy of “workers’ revolution, council power, and a socialist alternative.” How far the Stockholm conference can move this strategy from slogans to a concrete, workable program that resonates with a new generation of activists inside and outside Iran is a question well worth following – not only for those who care about Iran’s future, but also for anyone thinking seriously about the future of the global left.