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From Anarchist Perspective
January 11, 2026

Iran: The tragedy of the failure of the Constitutional Revolution, the comedy of 1978, & the tragicomedy of today's constitutionalists

During my conversation tonight with a dear comrade, he said: “We've already had the tragedy once (the Constitutional Revolution itself), we've had the comedy ('78), now we've arrived at tragicomedy!” I was immediately reminded of the saying, “The first time is tragedy, the second is farce,” not to laugh at people's suffering, but to see the mechanism of the repetition of roles: each generation, with new words, re-enters a stage whose set remains the same.

The Tragedy of the Constitutional Failure

For many, the Constitutional Movement was a “demand for law”; that is, society wanted to make an arbitrary government at least minimally accountable. But from my anarchist perspective, the issue is this: if law does not rely on self-organized social force, sooner or later it becomes “paper for the next government's files.” Social-historical research has shown that the Constitutional Movement wasn't just a top-down negotiation; it had energy from below as well—local networks, urban activism, and even strains of grassroots democracy and women's demands.

Yet this tragedy began when we tied “government restraint” primarily to top-down instruments: the legislature, the constitution, formal institutions. Even if we accept the absurd assumption that they're necessary (which, from an anarchist's perspective, is tantamount to suicide, let alone necessity!), they're still not enough. If neighborhoods, guilds, councils, unions, cooperatives, and independent associations do not become the everyday pillars of social power, the state—any state—will find a million ways to circumvent the law, or rewrite it in its own language. It is within this framework that unequal alliances of forces (including legitimizing religious ones) and zero-sum competitions can wear down the experience.

So, for me, the “failure of the Constitutional Revolution” is not just the failure of a revolution; it is the failure of a method: hoping that a centralized state can be restrained with a few legal locks, without forging the real key (organized horizontal power in society).

The Comedy of '78

Some portray 1978 as an “inevitable revolution,” but a major line of scholarship has a problem with precisely that certainty: many—even political actors and citizens—considered a revolution unlikely until moments before it happened; suddenly it became “imaginable,” and this shift in perception itself became the engine for mobilization.

So why “comedy”? If we use Marx's metaphor, a farce is the repetition of a structure with a new mask. From my perspective, '78 was a moment when society wanted to emerge from under a heavy state, but a large part of its political imagination was still state-centric: as if freedom had to be decreed “from above” and justice achieved by “a righteous center.” Modern historiographies of Iran have repeatedly shown that even in revolutionary periods, the state's capacity can expand, and social conflicts can lead to greater centralization.

So, “Comedy '78,” in my language, is not the mockery of the people; it is the mockery of an illusion: that if we remove the crown and put on a turban, a suit and tie, or any other symbol, the very logic of commanding and obeying changes on its own.

The tragicomedy of the “Second Constitutional Monarchy” awaits

The “Second Constitutional Monarchy”—whatever meaning we assign to it—smells of a familiar desire: A rewriting of the political contract to restrain power. I have no principled objection to this desire; “arbitrary rule” is truly destructive. But my fear is that once again we will bring everything to the same stage: a brilliant legal text!, a few new formal institutions, and the same fragmented society that still lacks the tools for its everyday self-governance.

This is where the tragicomedy is born:

Tragedy, because collective energy is once again spent on building the “next government,” and the main victim is once again the freedom lived in everyday life.

Comedy, because we hear the same line again: “This time it's different,” while beneath the surface the same logic of concentration is at work.

Anarchism usually suggests shifting the center of gravity: instead of society organizing around the state, society should at the very least be reduced to a network of accountable, revocable local units—that is, self-organization based on voluntary actions contingent on points of commonality.

We are not making the same mistake twice; we are making it three times.

The mistake ahead will be much more difficult and arduous than even '78, because modern and postmodern technology will also be in the hands of the coming authority.

Gandam

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/14/2026 - 08:06

Maybe i don't understand what determinism is, but this tag seems strange. This piece is just saying that if collective energy is spent on building the next government, the cycle will repeat. It seems to be saying we need to break the cycle, not succumb to it.

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