Decided to bring their dispute with the Iranian government on
the subject of the termination of the Anglo Iranian oil
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The game, some said, would never take place here.
It is unfolding with real drama, and it's Iran 5 minutes before
halftime. Hi, welcome to the Iran 1400
podcast. I'm your host Sidney Martin and
this is part two of our three-part conversations.
Doctor Khave Assani about the social history of oil in Iran.
Doctor Assani is an Associate Professor of International
Studies at DePaul University. Among other things, he
specializes in the historical and contemporary impact of oil
on society and politics. In today's episode, he delves
into the evolution of Labor in the 20th century.
He analyzes the process through which rural Iranians came to
become incorporated into a new industrial system and discusses
the far reaching ramifications it had for future generations
and Iranian society as a whole. If you missed our first episode
where we discussed the significance of social history
and Iran's economy before the discovery of oil, please do
check that out. Enjoy.
So we've we've now talked about the establishment of the working
class and the oil industry in Iran.
In working for oil, comparative social histories of Labor, and
the global oil industry, you wrote that the history of Iran
can be divided into 3 distinct periods.
Could you tell the audience what those periods are and briefly go
over the key events that occurred during them?
Well, I mean I, you know, I would probably kind of provide
different periodizations now, OK.
Offhand I can't, I can't recall exactly, but I think what I was
referring to was that you know, like there's a you know in terms
of. In terms of Labor history and
oil and we have this, you know, if you look at the social
history of, you know, industrial labor and wage labor under in a
market economy and capitalism, we always have like these
vaguely 3 periods that maybe that's what I was referring to.
These periods are like initially when you have the rise of.
Capitalist industrialization, which forces workers to kind of
leave the land or forces people off the land and makes them
dependent on it, you know, creates a labor market, actually
quite violently, by dispossessing people from
alternative modes of living. There's a huge resistance.
There's so-called Luddite resistance, you know, like
seeing the machinery, seeing the industry as an enemy.
Workers see the industry as an enemy.
They they break the machines, they sabotage they.
They become bandits to attack, you know, the the, the industry
as as something evil in itself. Not capitalism, not the market,
but the, you know, the the emanations of it, the the, the
symbols of it, the machinery of it.
So that's that's usually the first phase.
And then you have a second phase where you know, there's some
kind of, you know, okay, people get incorporated, they lose
other alternative forms of livelihood.
They have to kind of adapt A and adopt themselves to a time
discipline, you know, like change the previous, you know,
modes of living, you know with seasons and with, you know,
migrations and you know, agricultural seasons and all
that. They have to become subject to
the clock time, you know, like which is a mechanical time.
It's a very different kind of time.
You don't have to appear at 8:00 o'clock and 8:00 o'clock is you
know, no matter what season you have to appear and you know like
your, your later gets counted by the hour, by the minute.
So you know people kind of become subject to this, to this
discipline and they try to kind of you know adopt to it, adopted
and adapt to it. And then the third phase is
usually when this has already happened and you know the next
generation of. Of Labor comes up and then
they're completely operate within within the system, you
know, and they can negotiate with it, but it's not that they
can imagine or work outside the system at all, right?
So they can unionize, they can force for unionization or
negotiations or like you know, fight for getting things that we
take for granted now like a weekend.
Or vacation time, you know that but that's like the third phase
that that that occurs and I think we see we see the same
thing in in in the social history of oil in Iran, you know
in that in that industry that. So there's a first phase that's
you know roughly through the First World War and and the
middle 1920s where it's it's tremendously violent.
We know very little about it. You know unless you kind of
actually study this history which is what I've tried to do.
It's tremendously violent because it displaces people.
It it it's kind of it's it's it's it's coercive, it's it's
socially destructive. It, you know, it destroys from
top down and bottom up the the whole social structures.
You know, you have wrenching stories like starvation and
massive hunger and you know, constant warfare and and
banditry and and all that. And then you know, you have to.
The period of 1920s, roughly through 1940s, where you know,
okay, an industry has taken place and workers are kind of
oil workers and people working in the oil industry, the
industrial working class is kind of.
Has taken shape and has become mature and is kind of
incorporated into into the system.
And then you have to, you know this eruption which is in 1949
to 1953, which is like you know the, the, the, the sparks that
kind of actually lights up the Cold War.
It's global as well as it's local as well as it's national,
right. So I mean the the the oil
nationalization movement in Iran is really cut kind of gets
initiated by the workers. You know in 195046 you have this
huge labor strike that happens in Iran but also across the
world, in Kenya, in the US And you know you have this labor
eruption at the end of Second World War where people, you
know, workers and everywhere say, look, you know, we've made
all the sacrifice for this war that had nothing to do with us.
And we want our share, you know, we want, we want to be, you
know, we don't want just to be victims we want.
Good hours. We want to be able to negotiate.
We want to kind of not that we've made all the sacrifice, We
want affluence, we want decent lives and all that.
And this is with housing, with education, with healthcare, with
the right to collective bargaining.
It happens everywhere. It happens in Iran too.
And this is what sparks the oil nationalization movement in
Iran, which becomes a national thing, but it's also very global
because it that's when kind of Soviet Union and the US really
start kind of. Instead of the wartime allies
become, you know, de facto enemies and you know,
ideological rivals in a in an open warfare, which is cold, but
but it's it, it could be, you know, it could be quite as
vicious as as a as a hot warfare, right?
And after this, after 1950s, after the coup d'etat in Iran,
you really kind of entered this era where you haven't
established working class. And the issues become quite
different. You know that the issues become
less political, more kind of terms of in they become demands
of a kind of a relatively well paid, relatively well taken care
of working class living in enclaves.
And that that is kind of struggles to some extent for you
know, for better conditions and all that.
Until you know the war, you know until the revolution in 1979 and
all that. So there you know these are the
distinct periods that that matter.
But we can kind of think of the this history in many different
periods but in that book that's what I was referring to.
I was referring to like this trajectory of of industrial
working classes in oil that is pretty much happens everywhere
you know that from this possession.
To kind of getting, you know becoming incorporated and then
kind of accepting the system and and kind of moving within it.
And this is this is what EP Thompson in particular kind of
put his finger on the the prominent English social
historian of of of of working class.
So you mentioned the 19 or 1949 to 1953 and I I think that most
of the listeners probably know about.
The political implications of that, but not so much about the
oil nationalization movement and the oil workers themselves
there. So and I know that this you
might not be able to answer this question exactly because you are
not in the heads of these people, but from from your
studies, from your history. So with the failure of the
nationalization movement, I would imagine that there's a
great. Sort of disillusionment that's
occurred because of that. How did that affect the oil
workers in that time period, in the decades after?
Were they completely unwilling to try again because of how
poorly it turned out? What were the ramifications of
that in sort of the the spirit of the Iranian worker, if that
makes sense? And then a followup question
would be? Iran oil eventually did become
nationalized. Was that the same?
Did those nationalized the same demands that not the not the
workers were demanding for in 1953 and also was the 1953
movement, was that led more by the workers themselves as
opposed to when Iran actually did nationalize?
Was that more of, say, a government?
Push if that makes sense. Let me, let me put it this way,
kind of dovetailing the previous question we asked.
We have these you know in my book I talk you know that I have
a chapter in there that which is about this you know in the
1920s, the oil company. You know, I mean this is, I mean
we we just are sort of emerging out of the COVID pandemic,
right. And the previous global pandemic
was the the, you know, the, the socalled the, the Spanish
influenza which killed millions in Iran.
It killed you know millions of people really badly affected and
the oil industry and the war had a lot to do with it because of
the vast movement of populations you know armies and.
You know, ships and so on and so forth.
You know, coming to, you know, to ports in in southwestern
Iran, moving to Mesopotamia, to Iraq and all that.
So pandemics and public health was a huge issue because it, it
was just decimating workers and expatriates working there,
right. So the oil company wanted to
kind of expel a lot of people in Abaddon that were living around
the. The the oil refinery and you
start and for the first time you get this huge pushback where
people refuse to move. You know people in in these like
really poor. These are refugees 7-8 thousand
of them as far as I can tell that just kind of refused.
They they just kind of put up resistance they they stand in
front of demolition. Cruise and all that.
And what the oil company wants to do is to build a modern
market, a sanitary market as it calls it, because it kind of
realizes that or it argues that it's the mode of food
distribution and which is kind of really unhealthy and people
are living in filth and it wants to basically move them away from
the centers of industrial production.
And people refuse because they said, look we're we're refugees
with, you know this, we're living here and the compensation
is not enough and they kind of put up a resistance.
And the central government in Iran, which is at that time in
transition the Dresser show has not become the Pallavi dynasties
not established yet but it wants to kind of take charge of
localities and making modern army and kind of imposes
sovereignty in this valuable. Province that it had very little
to sway over. So you know, the, yeah, it's a,
it's a very important formative period, right.
And this is the first time that you start getting a kind of a
working class movement around oil.
But it's not a working class movement because if you know, at
at the time where you have huge unemployment, refugees, hunger
and all that, if workers kind of actually are.
To come out and protest because their housing is being taken
from them, because this is mostly, you know, workers with
their families and as refugees living, you know, right in
proximity as well as many others, right.
So the workers are mingled in these cities and the city in
Abadan, you know, and and quorum shash, which is the main port
next to it, they're mixed with other populations, right.
And what they end up doing is they, the workers basically melt
and become part of an urban craft.
That puts up a resistance over social citizenship, you know,
demands of the right to the city that we're members of the city,
You know, we have the right to live.
We need dignity. We need housing.
We need, you know, basic sanitary, you know,
infrastructure. We can't just be pushed out as
chattel, right. So this is a very important
moment because it shows us and this is something that is missed
often in terms of, you know, the politics of Labor is that often.
Kind of Labor resistance, which is over not just workplace
things, you know, like struggles, but you know safety
or wages and so on and so forth, but also over housing and
everyday life and you know provisions and you know and
access to health and you know public health and all that.
They kind of they they kind of work workers work with oil
workers work with, you know, other ethnic groups, other
social classes. To fight for this urban rights,
right. So the point I'm making is that
a lot of, and this is very important because it, you know
Abaddon and the oil cities in Iran are the first instances of
a modern urban culture. And I don't use modern as as a
normative. You know it's it's modern is
good, tradition is bad. It's just like this historical
transformation that we're talking about.
You know modern means like you have people from all sorts of
ethnic. Cultural you know, racial
backgrounds mingling and becoming neighbors.
You know like all becoming Abadani's instead of being you
know Bakhtiorri or Arab or Pucheri and all that simply
because they have to, you know because they're kind of forced
into this filthy difficult you know unhealthy, you know hell,
like you know industrial city that is Abadan and you know with
50,000 population. Right.
So this is a very important moment where, you know, labor
struggles are kind of melded with with urban struggles and
with other members of, you know, population.
The same thing happens in the 5th in the 40s with the oil
nationalization, right. So you have a lot of urban
struggles, you know, because housing is a huge and pressing
issue. Remember, Iran was occupied by
force. Again in the Second World War by
the allies by Britain and and US to kind of provision you know
Soviet Union through the Iranian railroad.
So the you know you had a huge pressure on population because
you know it was wartime and you know you had an occupying army
and and you know you know and and then you know the the the
issues that kind of really mobilized workers where.
And urbanites and urban citizens in Abaddon and oil cities where
issues like housing, public health and so on and so forth.
But in the 40s, what you start getting is for the first time,
workers actually also become very active and resistant in the
workplace itself, right? So it's not just urban anymore.
They don't need to hide as much. They become much more kind of
selfconfident and kind of press their.
Demands in the workplace to demanding for unionization, for
better wages and and so on and so forth, Right.
So it's a, it's a more mature working class that begins to
emerge with its own voice. And this is part of a global
process that's happening. You know, in the UN you have the
ILO, the, you know, International Labor
Organization. That's established because it
wants to kind of standardize, prevent communism, you know,
prevent the working classes from kind of gravitating towards
communism by giving them some. Some welfare and protection and
and legal protection and all that and trying to standardize
this in the so-called free world or you know non non communist
world. So you have this these struggles
that are kind of taking place you know in the 50s.
So oil nationalization is part of is part of the political
demand because workers become real begin to realize or at
least begin to argue that. This cannot be done.
You know the the demands that we have cannot be done only under
the rubric of this multinational oil corporation that basically
treats us like a that colonial sub colonial subjects.
That's simply simply at some point arbitrarily decides to
give us some things and you know denies us the rights that other
workers doing exactly the same work elsewhere are being denied,
right. So oil nationalization becomes
part of this discourse And of course political activists, you
know, communist activists to the activists, others play a big
role. You know, it's not workers by
themselves, but you know, like this mobilization that kind of
ties them with others, right. So in the after the 1953, what
happens with the, with the, with the, with the working class
movement is that you really, it's a, you know, it's a martial
law. It's a you know it's a it's it's
a beginning of a autocracy. But the labor force in oil
becomes sort of an labor aristocracy.
They're highly demanded. You know you have set instead of
1, you have 7 multinational corporations participating in
oil production in Iran. The Iranian government basically
negotiates with them to pay better the actually the national
Iranian oil Company that. Becomes part of this consortium
is in charge of taking care of the labor forces in Iran.
So you get sort of a welfare state for the workers but
actually not others. You know So if you're if you're
not part of the oil industry you you don't get benefits but if
you are part of the oil industry, you get a permanent
contract. You get fairly good wages.
You get good schooling housing you know company housing and so
on and so forth. In 1973, when oil is nominally
nationalized in Iran during the, you know, OPEC oil crisis, it's
this is very top down and it's meant to kind of increase Iran's
share of the of the oil revenues, you know, versus the
other company. The other oil multinationals
stay in Iran, continue to operate, but they don't own, you
know, shares anymore. They become basically
subcontractors but actually still continue to be in charge.
It is in 1979 eighty, you know, after the revolution that de
facto nationalization takes place and all the oil, you know,
multinationals get, you know, kicked out and primarily workers
and managers take take over. So these, you know, these are
very kind of distinct periods with different, with different
demands and different kind of agency.
In the 1979 revolution, oil workers played a key role.
I mean they were the first time where in.
The kind of the so-called third world workers actually took over
an industry, an oil industry, advanced oil industry and shut
it down and then began to operate it on their own, showing
that actually this is not the kind of technical skill that
relies only on international technology, but they can kind of
manage it. But of course after that, you
know, you have the Iran, Iraq war and you know sanctions and
so on and so forth so. The story keeps changing, but
but this is basically the the the kind of sequence of events
that we're dealing. We hope you enjoyed this talk
with Dr. Kaveh Asani. If you missed the first part of
our conversation, which discussed around social history
and Labor Relations before the discovery of oil, please check
it out. You can also find our episodes
with Ida Niku on the labor movement throughout the past 40
years in Iran. Part three of our conversation
with Doctor Asani, which analyzes Labor Relations today,
will be out soon, so please subscribe to the podcast to stay
up to date. If you would like to keep up
with the rest of our content, you can find the Iran 1400
Project on social media or visit ourwebsite@iran1400.org.
Thanks again for listening.