Interview with Hamid Taqvaee
April 2000

Ali Javadi: The first aspects on freedom that come to mind are freedom of press, political freedom and freedom of expression. What more is there to freedom?

Hamid Taqvaee: The aspects of freedom you mentioned are those provided within legal confines, freedoms that have laws associated with it in various societies and that are recognised. Of course, in some societies like Iran many freedoms even within this limited scope are not recognised. However, the establishment of legal freedoms is only the first step. Our concept of freedom and the kind of freedom we want to establish in society goes well beyond these confines. Freedom must include the wherewithal to exercise freedom; people should be free economically and socially to be able to use their freedom. If a vast number of people do not have the wherewithal to make use of their freedoms, even when the law recognises freedom, it becomes a formal and empty concept, which does not have any impact on the social and real lives of people in that society.

Ali Javadi: What do you mean by people needing to have the wherewithal to exercise freedom?

Hamid Taqvaee: Suppose you are given the freedom of expression. The law can never delve into what you say in your day-to-day life at work and home. In this instance and to some extent, everyone is free. Freedom of expression, however, means that everyone can convey their views and opinions to a much larger audience. To do this, you need access to print media, radio, TV or a microphone. If you want to secure these privately, you will need extensive capital in today’s society. The government must have a positive view to your accessing these and allow you and want to allow you use of governmental and public facilities. In societies like Iran, where incidentally people need freedom of expression to criticise, oppose and attack the government, the state will clearly not provide such facilities to anyone. If anyone can secure non-governmental funds to publish a newspaper and utter an oppositional view, the newspaper will be shut down. Clearly, then, on paper it is possible for everyone to be free; yet in Iran but also in advanced societies where there is democracy in its current meaning and the law recognises these rights and freedoms, it is impossible to exercise your freedoms if you do not have the necessary money and resources. Today, especially with the mass media and gigantic communications companies in the United States or industrialised Western countries, newspapers, radio and television run with immense capital are busy shaping public opinion and manufacturing consent. Even if you access public facilities, your voice and opinions will not be heard if you do not have access to the several TV, radio and print media monopolies which are the main sources of news and opinions in these countries. It becomes clear that freedom is effectively and de facto limited to the wherewithal to exercise freedom.

Ali Javadi: You have mentioned limitations and lack of access to resources necessary to exercise freedom. Apart from lack of access to mass media, what other limitations exist?

Hamid Taqvaee: At a fundamental level, these limitations are class related. I have stated that it depends on resources, however, when we look at the issue on a social and mass level, we see that these resources are distributed according to class. If someone is from the capitalist and prosperous class whose income and resources are made from their ownership of private firms and factories and not by directly earning a living like workers or the working class, then a wide range of society’s resources are at their disposal. Class divisions create inequality and various forms of discrimination such as inequality based on sex, nationality, race, religion, etc. These inequalities limit and make conditional the use of legal freedoms. As long as these inequalities exist in society, real freedom is impossible.

Ali Javadi: You seem to treat people’s freedom and human liberation as one. Is this so?

Hamid Taqvaee: When we speak of liberated humanity and liberated society, we are not only referring to freedom, but to a society that recognises human beings as human beings, irrespective of differences and where society’s resources are equally distributed for public use. Everyone should be able to use society’s resources according to their needs. It is then that we have a liberated human being and society. This is what Marx refers to when he says that the history of humanity will only begin from this point. All of history up until now is the period of pre-historic human, a period in which humanity is not liberated and human beings have not experienced a social life in the human sense. Class society by definition and for the reasons I have stated cannot be a human society and accordingly a free and liberated society. The meaning of freedom in our slogan: ‘Freedom, Equality and Workers’ State’ is precisely the comprehensive concept of freedom.

Ali Javadi: Bourgeois advocates and the official media state that this is good but unachievable and that much of the resources you discuss are not within humanity’s reach and obtainable. What is your response?

Hamid Taqvaee: Many say that these are unachievable. It is interesting that all these societies are nonetheless using their resources, the police and repressive forces, and censorship to prevent in reality the implementation of the unachievable. If it is unachievable, I don’t know why there is so much enmity with communists and those who have such aspirations, censorship, so many arrests, coup d’etats and colossal budgets for armies, police, and intelligence forces all over the world? One should, therefore, not take ‘impractical’ and ‘unachievable’ seriously. This is not an academic, philosophical or scientific issue; it is a clearly political issue. When society’s intellectuals, non-intellectuals, politicians, and experts say these views are impractical, I think that the response is simple. Put aside the police, organs of oppression and the machinery of manufacturing public opinion, let power fall into the hands of people and those who think it is practical, and then you will see how really practical it is.

Ali Javadi: In dealing with the issue of freedom many consider freedom and democracy as being one and the same. In your opinion, what is the difference between freedom and democracy? From what angle do you emphasis the concepts of freedom and liberation?

Hamid Taqvaee: In general, this is not the case for the masses of people. When people speak of freedom they are alluding to a liberated life using the same concept I have, that is a life free of discriminations, limitations and hindrances. That is how people represent freedom. When women say we want to be free in society, they do not mean that they want parliamentary democracy or want to send an MP to parliament. When in Iran we talk about freedom for Afghans, we do not mean that Afghans necessarily want parliamentary democracy there but rather that Afghans and non-Afghans and women and men be equal in that society, be able to live side by side like human beings, have equal resources and be able to use the freedoms in that society. This is the real understanding that people have of freedom. That this has been misrepresented, twisted and reduced to democracy and parliament is the work of the powers that be and the machinery for manufacturing public opinion that I mentioned. In diplomatic terminology, freedom signifies democracy and anyone who talks about freedom is told that we have elections once every five years, or we have a parliament or free press, according to their interpretation of freedom, and therefore, they say the society is a democratic one and democracy reigns. Their interpretation of democracy is anti-freedom and has acquired an inhuman meaning and become an entirely negative concept. I think we must speak of freedom and say that people want freedom and not democracy; they have brought to power many different dictatorships in the third world from Latin America to Asia and today all over the world with club-wielding democracy and with this name. Today, they call the Islamic Republic of Iran an Islamic democracy, which is a bitter irony of history. In the same way they call Mr. Pinochet’s Chile a democracy, today, the Islamic Republic is to become one. In this sense, democracy has become entirely inhuman and anti-freedom.

The above is a translated summary of an interview with Radio International broadcast on 20 April 2000. Translators: Maryam Namazie and Fariborz Pooya.