The inaugural book in Oneworld Publications’ series on the Radical Histories of the Middle East is a monograph on the life and legacy of the mid-twentieth century Iranian socialist Khalil Maleki (1901–69). This is a book that has been a long time in the making. Its author is Homa Katouzian, whose well-known and extensive publication record includes several essays and edited volumes on Maleki. In these as well as in his latest work Katouzian is not merely a narrator of history, he is an active participant in its making. In the early 1960s, while a freshman at Tehran University, he met and grew close with Maleki, joined Maleki’s Socialist League, and contributed to Elm o Zendegi that was published under Maleki’s editorship. This close personal involvement, though not explicitly acknowledged, invariably seeps into the pages of the book. The combination of Katouzian’s firsthand knowledge of some of the episodes on which he reports, his detailed record of Maleki’s associations with other prominent intellectual and political figures of the mid-twentieth century, and his wide-angle account of social and political life in modern Iran makes the book a unique and valuable resource for scholars of modern Iranian history and political thought.
Khalil Maleki is organized in eight chapters with an Introduction and an Epilogue. The Introduction sets the contours of the book, introducing Maleki as an exceptional figure whose nationalist social-democratic vision challenged both the authoritarian “pseudo-modernism” of the Pahlavi state (p. xiii) and the anti-democratic Marxist-Leninist alternative of the Tudeh Party (p. xv). It describes Maleki as an oft-misunderstood intellectual who was ahead of his time, and who deserves to be discovered anew (p. xi). Chapter 1 provides a biographical sketch of Maleki’s life from his birth in 1901 to his first imprisonment in 1937. Through a number of anecdotes, the chapter paints a portrait of Maleki as a skeptic of radial political rhetoric who remained steadfast in his principles and refused to retreat after setbacks (pp. 6, 8, 17). The chapter also shows how as a university student Maleki gravitated toward the Left, entered Taqi Erani’s Marxist circle, and was arrested and sentenced to prison as part of the famous Group of Fifty-Three (p. 10) that formed the nucleus for the future Tudeh Party. Chapter 2 discusses Maleki’s ambivalent relationship with the Tudeh Party during the its early years, his initial refusal to join, and his subsequent but reluctant entry at the insistence of a group of young reformist members who saw in him an experienced and principled mentor (p. 32). The chapter depicts Maleki as a political operative with considerable foresight, who sometimes went against his own better judgement for the interests of the group but at high personal and political cost. The reforms he championed earned him staunch enemies among some of the party’s senior leaders and their powerful backers in the Soviet Union (p. 44), resulting in intraparty feuds and Maleki’s eventual split (p. 59).
Set against the backdrop of political upheavals in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the next two chapters track Maleki’s further distancing from the Tudeh Party and his gravitation toward Mohammad Mosaddeq and the nationalist cause. According to Katouzian, Maleki’s criticism in this period of the Tudeh Party and the Soviet Union marked the first instance of such criticism in Iran (p. 68). Maleki, we are told, rebuked Tudeh leaders for their “blind faith in communism and the Soviet power” (p. 69), while faulting the Soviet leadership with turning Lenin’s ideas into dogma, imposing Soviet will on other nations, and negating “democracy” and “individual freedoms” (p. 71). Maleki first articulated this position in a series of articles in Shahed, a newspaper published by the conservative-leaning Mozaffar Baqāʾi. It was also with Baqāʾi that he went on to found the Toilers Party. Yet the nature of the relationship between the two men emerges as one of the confounding and underexplored aspects of the book. We read in chapter 3 that Maleki and Baqāʾi had initially disagreed on the question of nationalization of oil (p. 78), and in chapter 4 that “the political background, attitude and character of these two were so different that would have made their political cooperation seem difficult” (p. 98). We also learn that shortly after the establishment of the Toilers Party, Baqāʾi “had almost come to blows with Mosaddeq” over seemingly trivial matters (p. 119). Still, the book offers little in the way of a rationale for this outwardly unlikely alliance; merely that the combination of Maleki’s intellectual prowess and Baqāʾi’s charisma and political skills “proved very fruitful for quite some time until Baqa’i decided to leave the party with his personal followers” (p. 99).
Chapter 5 goes into the aftermath of the split in the Toilers Party and the formation of the Maleki-led Third Force Party whose objectives were to put forth a social-democratic alternative to the Tudeh Party and to back the nationalist agenda of the Popular Movement (p. 127). While the new party wanted Iran to “break free” from both western and eastern blocs, it nevertheless defended an independent “socialist road to social and economic development” on the basis of local “culture and historical experience” (p. 129). There are surely interesting parallels to be made here between Maleki’s third force theory, and the principles which came to be articulated some years later at the 1955 Asian–African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, and institutionalized thereafter in the form of the Non-Aligned Movement. One may also draw comparisons between Maleki’s conception of the “Third Force” and Alfred Sauvy’s notion of the “Third World,” or Mao Zedong’s theory of the “Three Worlds.” Aside from a brief section, however, where Maleki’s vision is likened to those of Jawaharlal Nehru and Josip Broz Tito (p. 128), the book misses the opportunity to place Maleki in broader global conversations about national, cultural, and economic self-determination taking place at the critical juncture of the end of the age of European colonialism and the dawn of the cold war era. Still, by expanding on his critical assessment of the Soviet Union, chapter 5 provides a fuller picture of how Maleki sought to distinguish his brand of socialism from that of the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party. Katouzian credits Maleki with having been the first analyst to describe the Soviet economy as an “anti-socialist” form of “state capitalism” (p. 140). We also learn that for Maleki “the greatest danger” facing the Popular Movement came neither from autocratic elements inside Iran nor from Britain or the United States, but from the Soviet Union (p. 141).
Examining the lead-up to and the aftermath of the 1953 coup, chapter 6 chronicles a growing rift between Maleki and other leading opposition figures. Though he saw Mosaddeq’s overthrow as a setback, Maleki nevertheless insisted on the possibility of peaceful democratic reforms “within the regime of constitutional monarchy” (p. 173), calling on nationalists and social democrats to collaborate with “the uncorrupt members of the establishment” (p. 187). This position prompted some, including from within the Third Force, to regard him as a “traitor” and to demand his expulsion from the party. Katouzian, however, dismisses these charges, arguing instead that Maleki was a lone voice of moderation and pragmatism in turbulent times (p. 176). In the same chapter, we learn about Maleki’s renewed post-coup efforts to mobilize opposition “against the ideology of communism” while advancing an agenda of social-democratic reforms (p. 187); efforts that led in 1960 to the establishment of the Socialist League of Iran (p. 193). The new organization, whose affiliates consisted primarily of the old Third Force members, proved to have more longevity than its predecessor. Still, as chapter 7 outlines in some detail, its defense of the administration of Ali Amini, who was regarded by Maleki as being part of the “uncorrupt and responsible” wing of the regime (p. 203), drove a wedge between the League and its sister organization abroad, the League of Iranian Socialists in Europe (p. 204). In this chapter, we also read about Maleki’s foreign travels during the early 1960s, including to Europe at the invitation of Albert Carthy, secretary-general of the Socialist International, and to Israel at the invitation of ex-prime minister Moshe Sharett. According to Katouzian, Maleki wrote a “favorable travelogue” of his visit to Israel, describing it “as a model socialist country and a viable alternative to the Soviet model” (p. 207).
Chapter 8 covers the period between Maleki’s return from his last European trip in March 1964 and his death in July 1969. Though no longer in the leadership of the party, in his final years Maleki maintained close ties with the Socialist League and contributed to party publications (p. 231). The chapter draws on Maleki’s letters from this period, wherein he bemoans his financial troubles (p. 235), blasts the failures of the shah’s reform program, and mentions efforts to revive the National Front (p. 236). It further discusses Maleki’s arrest in 1964 and his eighteen months’ imprisonment, which, according to Katouzian, was part of SAVAK’s efforts to preempt the formation of a new (i.e. Third) National Front (p. 239). One is left with the impression that after prison Maleki grew increasingly skeptical about the prospects of democratic reforms and came to see the Iranian populace as being subservient to the regime and even “more afraid than SAVAK expects them to be” (p. 244). Finally, the Epilogue offers a brief account of Maleki’s successes and failures. Here, Katouzian is as unequivocal in his praise for Maleki’s ostensibly flawless political judgement as he is in his contempt for the shortsightedness of Maleki’s peers: “At every major turning point [Maleki] presented the right analysis and put forward the correct prediction which, however, was ignored or denounced by mass leaders.” On the other hand, Katouzian sees as a “personal failure” Maleki’s near-total focus on addressing the “elites” and his neglect to establish “the right public relations for attracting a large following” (p. 253).
In addition to his amicable criticism of Maleki’s elitism, there is one other instance where Katouzian appears to disagree with his former mentor. This comes earlier in the book, in chapter 2, where we read that as a Tudeh Party member in the mid-1940s, Maleki had written articles in defense of a demand by the Soviet Union for an oil concession in northern Iran—articles wherein Maleki had also attacked Mosaddeq for opposing the Soviet demand. Some years later, when criticized for these writings, Maleki had responded that his earlier pro-Soviet position was “a matter of party discipline.” Katouzian finds this unconvincing (p. 42). Apart from this, Katouzian appears to share Maleki’s positions wholly and uncritically, even those positions that have been contested by other scholars in the field. One such instance is Maleki’s stance on a 1952 proposal by the World Bank (then the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) for an interim arrangement for oil production and export amidst the dispute between Iran and Britain. Maleki strongly favored the Bank’s offer and saw it as being “very beneficial to the Popular Movement” (p. 112). This is echoed by Katouzian, who regards Mosaddeq’s rejection of the offer as “the greatest missed opportunity in the whole of the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute” (p. 111). Yet Maleki’s and Katouzian’s favorable estimation of the Bank’s mediation role sits uneasily with the much more skeptical assessments by L. P. Elwell-Sutton in Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (1955) and Ervand Abrahamian in The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.–Iranian Relations (2013). The latter concludes that the Bank’s proposal came at a time when the CIA and MI6 had already laid the groundwork for a coup, and that the US State Department and British Foreign Office were closely involved in the drafting of the Bank’s offer, setting conditions the acceptance of which would have undone the very purpose of nationalization.
Though rich in detail about aspects of Maleki’s convictions, particularly his disagreements with the Tudeh Party and the National Front, the book ultimately leaves more to be desired. Above all, the designation in the book’s subtitle, of Maleki as the “human face of Iranian socialism,” remains elusive and under-defined. The former part of the designation, the “human face,” is presumably meant to stress not only Maleki’s preference for democratic socialism over Soviet-style authoritarianism, but also his rejection of a fatalistic belief in historical determinism and his insistence on the role of human agency in changing the course of history (p. 136). As for the latter part, “Iranian socialism,” the book proposes that Maleki sought to present a brand of socialism based on Iran’s own cultural and historical experiences (p. 129). We read further that even though Maleki drew on European socialist thought, his conception of socialism “was not an imported blueprint, and it was firmly based on Iran’s resources and capacity, past and present” (p. 135). It is unclear, however, precisely what Iranian cultural resources were employed by Maleki in the construction of his Iranian socialism, and how the latter may be distinguished from European, as well as from other (non-Tudeh Party) varieties of socialism in Iran. Similarly, although the book asserts that some of Maleki’s views resemble those of contemporaneous European socialists (pp. 135, 207), it is not clear who Maleki’s European interlocutors were. Presumably, there are common grounds between Maleki’s thought and the ideas of some of the earlier figures among European democratic socialists such as Eduard Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Kautsky, or Milovan Ðilas, among his contemporaries. However, the book does not discuss whether Maleki was aware of these contributions or engaged with them in any manner.
Similarly, the relation between Maleki’s socialism and Marxism is discussed in somewhat ambiguous terms, although one may be able to piece together a timeline for Maleki’s move away from Marxist thought. Early in the book we read that under Erani’s influence Maleki turned to Marxism (pp. 12–13), and during his first prison term translated sections of Marx’s Capital from German to Persian (p. 24). We learn subsequently that upon his departure from the Tudeh Party, Maleki rejected “Soviet Marxism,” which in his view represented only one, albeit the dominant, “interpretation of Marxism” (p. 136). That Maleki distinguished between Marxism and Soviet Marxism is also evident in his view that the Soviet Union had malignly turned Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” into a “dictatorship over the proletariat” (p. 71), and his belief that “the Soviet system [of] state capitalism” was a corruption of “Marx’s theory of capital accumulation” (p. 141). Yet it appears that in the final years of his life Maleki parted ways with Marxism, commenting once that he found “Marx’s socialism” to be “unscientific” (p. 232). It is unclear from the book whether Maleki offered a theoretical and/or empirical critique of Marx’s views on socialism in any of his works.
Finally, since the book is published as a contribution to the Radical Histories of the Middle East series, it may be appropriate to end this review with a brief consideration of Maleki’s ambivalent radicalism. The book’s depiction of Maleki as someone with a deep aversion to “romantic and revolutionary slogans” (p. 6) who encouraged a politics of realism and moderation (p. 176), stood apart from “revolutionary Leftists” (p. 252), maintained a near-lifelong commitment to gradual and peaceful reform within the existing legal-political constraints (pp. xi, 173, 193, 232), and charged his opponents with “verbal” and “unrealistic radicalism” (p. 232), appears somewhat contrary to the conventional understanding of the term radical. Aware of this contradiction, Katouzian concludes the book by arguing that Maleki pursued radicalism “in the old sense of the term” (p. 253). In this sense, radicals are those who “speak their minds regardless of the sensitivities of the existing power centres,” whose ideas are ignored in their own lifetimes, and only receive the attention they deserve from future generations (p. 254). Five decades after his death, Maleki’s ideas have yet to garner popular attention. Perhaps the very publication of this book signals a change in that trajectory. History will be the judge.
