The 2017-18 uprisings changed the Iranian political landscape for good. Since then, the Islamic Republic has entered into an ‘organic crisis’ par excellence. Introduced and described by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci a century ago, it is a comprehensive economic, political, social and ideological crisis, in which the ruling classes are no longer able to generate societal consensus. In an often-quoted phrase of his Prison Notebooks, he writes, ‘In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’
Among the explicit morbid symptoms in the Islamic Republic are unemployment, stagflation, currency woes, corruption, and environmental degradation. However, there are other tacit symptoms that run through much of the population, the youth who are in-between immigration and unemployment, the students who have lost social aspirations, the workers who have been left to themselves, and above all the social fabric that is on the verge of disintegration.
The current round of protests in tens of towns and cities across the country is basically nothing but the continuation of the same socio-economic demands that have been put forward in the 2017-18 uprisings. At least 106 people have been killed in 21 cities and thousands injured and arrested during the first 3 days. There are some unverified speculations on the ground that says it is much more, reaching to over 200 slain protesters. The government has cut off the internet connectivity, with little to be known for the international community. This led to some misunderstandings among western spectators. With respect to these protests, we have to keep several points in mind.
