Farhang Radjai
Physicist, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
This article is base on the original version in Farsi.
Preface
From the time of René Descartes to the present, modern thought and science rely on a fundamental principle: every theory and scientific model must endure the test of reason and experience. If we observe social and political phenomena through this lens, we discover that successful movements and revolutions have followed the same logic and method. They have advanced through knowledge, experience, and the continuous testing of their assumptions in the field of practice.
Yet such a process, whether in science or in the social realm, requires organization and methodical action. History shows that spontaneous and unorganized uprisings, although often leaving deep social and historical impacts, have rarely succeeded in creating an alternative power that is stable and aligned with their initial aims. By contrast, organized movements, from the revolutions of the nineteenth century to the independence movements of the twentieth, managed to guide transformative processes toward their intended goals within a coherent, structured, and strategically led framework.
In Iran as well, the role of organization in the ongoing struggle for freedom and democracy is an urgent methodological and scientific question, one directly tied to the strategy for democratic change. This article seeks to show, drawing on philosophical concepts of doubt and certainty, the methodological framework of scientific inquiry (the movement from the known to the unknown and the testability of hypotheses), and sociological theories of revolution and collective action, why and how conscious, coherent, and organized struggle constitutes both the subjective and practical condition for liberation from religious despotism in Iran.
2. The Scientific Method and Political Action
At first glance, doubt appears to be a form of negation, yet in the Cartesian view, doubt is the necessary precondition for attaining certainty. In his Meditations, Descartes wrote: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt everything as far as possible.” [1] This sentence became the point of departure for modern philosophy, for it liberated human reason and thought from the authority of tradition and religion.
Descartes’ emphasis on the necessity of doubt was not an attack on knowledge or understanding, but an attempt to construct a new foundation for them, namely the removal of unfounded beliefs, illusions, and superstitions in the search for a rational and testable certainty. When this form of doubt was applied to the study of nature, it became known as the scientific method, a method grounded in observation, experimentation, and the continual revision of scientific theories.
In the scientific method, the researcher begins with existing knowledge and accepted hypotheses, what is known, but does not treat them as absolute or sacred. As long as a hypothesis or theory continues to function effectively in explaining observable phenomena, it is used as the basis for interpretation. But if that theory proves inadequate for analyzing or explaining a new or unfamiliar phenomenon, the researcher turns toward new hypotheses that are testable. This process may lead to a reconsideration of foundational assumptions in a given field or to a redefinition of the scope and validity of previous theories.
The same method can be used to understand human and social behavior. Modern sociology has shown that in the sphere of political and revolutionary action, movements that rely on continuous analysis and testing of their own experiences within an organized structure align more closely with the scientific method than movements that are merely reactive, spontaneous, or driven by momentary media impulses [2].
In science, the failure of a hypothesis to explain a phenomenon does not invalidate science itself; rather, it forms part of the broader process of deepening knowledge and discovery. Likewise, in a conscious and organized struggle for freedom, the revision of tactics and methods is part of the dynamic process of political action.
Organized struggle possesses a collective and historical memory, just as science does. It stores and analyzes experiences in the form of theories or action guidelines, learns from tactical mistakes, and generates new methods. Reliable scientific understanding emerges from systematic doubt, logical analysis, and controlled observation and experimentation. Similarly, liberation from political dead ends arises only through conscious critique, organized action, and the creation of structures and processes grounded in knowledge and experience.
3. Sociology and the Transformation of Discontent into Revolution
The sociology of revolution explains revolutions not as sudden events driven by individual wills, but as law-like processes. After World War II, scholars such as Alain Touraine [2], Charles Tilly [3], Theda Skocpol [4], and Barrington Moore [5] each approached the central question from different angles: Why do social and economic discontent sometimes lead to fundamental change, while in other instances it fails to do so?
A common thread runs through these perspectives: social and economic discontent does not, by itself, produce revolution. Relative deprivation exists in all societies, but only where networks of organization, communication, and mutual trust emerge among dissenting forces can discontent be transformed into effective collective action.
According to Tilly, revolutions occur when large numbers of people not only desire fundamental change but are also able to coordinate and act collectively [3]. From this viewpoint, organization plays in political struggle the same role that research institutions play in science. They gather experiences, test them, and convert them into knowledge that can be transmitted to the collective and to the future.
Without organization, every revolutionary action remains an individual experiment with limited impact. Even if such an action sparks broader mobilization, without an organizational structure there is no guarantee that the movement can sustain itself. The social energies released can easily be appropriated or manipulated by the ruling power.
Sustaining a movement requires a transition from revolutionary fervor to understanding. Passion and motivation may ignite action, but only when linked to an organization can they develop into consciousness. Organization transforms revolutionary passion into knowledge, and knowledge into deliberate action. This is analogous to the progression found in science: from initial inspiration, to logical hypothesis, and finally to a theory refined through contact with empirical data.
According to the “resource mobilization theory” [3], the strength of a movement derives from its capacity to organize its human, financial, and communicational resources. Ideology also finds its significance in this context. In the great revolutions of the twentieth century, from Vietnam to South Africa, victory arose not simply from the accumulation of mass anger, but from the existence of structures capable of channeling social energy within a coherent strategy [6].
Organizations in movements for freedom are not merely operational tools; they are the historical memory and the collective mind of the movement. They record errors, reproduce successes, and institutionalize experiences on a daily basis. This organizational and collective memory, through its synthesis and transmission of past experiences, is essential for the continuity and maturation of a movement, especially over the long term and across generations.
History offers numerous examples confirming this fundamental role of organization. The Indian independence movement, despite the vastness of the population, succeeded only when coherent leadership and a network of communication among regions and social groups were established [5]. The anti-apartheid movements in South Africa likewise maintained cohesion despite intense repression thanks to their disciplined political and educational structures [7].
Conversely, spontaneous uprisings such as those in Syria over the past decade were unable to construct a durable and powerful political alternative in the absence of organization and clear leadership. Experience has demonstrated that without organization, the transformative energy of social forces dissipates and cannot, over time, crystallize into a strong alternative or a mature political revolution.
Historical Experience: From Classical Revolutions to Modern Movements
a) The French Revolution and the Emergence of a New Political Rationality
The French Revolution (1789) is sometimes described as a spontaneous eruption of popular anger, but historical facts demonstrate that the revolution would have been impossible without the prior existence of political and intellectual structures [11]. Popular societies, political clubs such as the Jacobins, and extensive networks of writers and intellectuals had formed and become active well before the revolutionary storm broke out. These organizations played a dual role: on the one hand, they served as centers for the exchange of ideas, and on the other, as networks for coordinating social action. For this reason, the French Revolution was able to transform local uprisings into a vast national movement, draft a constitution, and establish new institutions. It was the product of revolutionary passion guided by collective reason.
b) The Russian Revolution: Organization Tested Against Grassroots Movement
In early twentieth-century Russia, social conditions were deeply unstable, yet instability did not automatically lead to revolution. Before 1917, numerous strikes and uprisings had occurred, but all were repressed or dispersed. Only when experienced revolutionary organizations such as the Bolshevik Party managed to build a coordinated network of workers, soldiers, and intellectuals did the balance of forces shift [12].
This organization was not merely an instrument of power. It was a mechanism for managing collective cognition, gathering information from different regions, analyzing conditions, making centralized decisions, and integrating feedback from the results. In the logic of the scientific method, this is the feedback loop that every dynamic system requires to interact with its environment and to survive. It was through such a mechanism that the Bolsheviks, in a moment of social crisis, were able to transform themselves into a coherent historical force capable of overthrowing the existing state.
c) From the Twentieth Century to Modern Movements
Throughout the twentieth century, numerous examples have demonstrated that organization is not a formal accessory but a necessary condition for political and moral endurance in the face of repression and censorship. Under Gandhi’s leadership, the Indian independence movement created a network of councils and regional communication structures that elevated the struggle from emotional reaction to coherent political strategy [5].
Similarly, the anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, particularly the African National Congress, operated for decades through structures based on education, analysis, and internal reporting, such that every setback became a source of learning [7]. In Eastern Europe during the 1980s, from Poland to Czechoslovakia, organized unions and civil institutions enabled societies to move from a period of protest to one of actual political replacement [13].
By contrast, contemporary examples in the Middle East have shown that the accumulation of popular anger and spontaneous uprisings, without organization and without a clear strategy, may challenge a regime but do not necessarily lead to structural change, especially under the intensity of repression and the constraints of regional and global geopolitics.
As Touraine observed, a revolution without organization is merely a moment of self-awareness which, if not institutionalized, quickly disappears [2]. This observation applies with particular force to the Middle East and to Iran.
d) A Recurring Pattern
If we place these examples alongside the history of science, a recurring pattern emerges. Just as scientific institutions (universities, laboratories, specialized journals) ensure the continuity and deepening of knowledge, political and social institutions such as parties, associations, and organizations ensure the continuity and accumulation of militant experience.
In both realms, the capacity for knowledge and effective action arises from organizational memory and the commitment of network members to collective work. In the absence of such institutions, science quickly loses its truth-seeking substance, just as revolution degenerates into chaos and deviates from its original goals. Historical experience from the eighteenth century to the present clearly shows that wherever stable and institutionalized change has occurred, scientific doubt, rationality, and organizational networks have operated together. And wherever these three elements have been weak or absent, the outcome has been either a return to dictatorship, as witnessed after the anti-monarchical revolution in Iran, or the collapse of social hope, as in the mass uprising of 2009, which rested on the illusion of the reformability of the theocratic regime and on the spontaneity of social networks.
4. Organization as a Laboratory of Collective Reason
In science, no theory is an absolute truth. Each is a provisional framework based on specific concepts and assumptions for coherently explaining a set of phenomena until, confronted with new data and new observations, it must be revised or replaced. Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, described scientific knowledge as a process of “bold conjectures and severe refutations.” Human knowledge grows through the formulation of hypotheses and the testing of those hypotheses against reality [8, 9].
Scientific progress arises not through the accumulation of certainties but through the correction of errors. This logic of cognitive growth is not confined to physics or biology; it is a general model for the development of rationality in human life and society.
At the social and political level, every major movement requires a tactic, a kind of collective hypothesis, a conjecture about what will happen if a certain course of action is pursued. In this context, organization plays the same role that scientific institutions play in research: the formulation of hypotheses (goal-setting and tactical planning), the design of methods of testing (stages of action, communication channels, and data analysis), the collection of results (successful and unsuccessful experiences), and finally, the revision of the hypothesis based on real-world data.
Without organization, this process of collective learning cannot occur because there is no coherent memory or evaluative mechanism. A movement without organization resembles a group of scientists, each performing a different experiment in isolation, with no way to compare or synthesize their results.
In science, failure does not mean destruction; it becomes a new datum. Similarly, in organized political struggle, a setback is not the end of the path but part of a collective process of learning and advancement. Each failure disconfirms a hypothesis and opens new horizons. In contrast, individual or unorganized actions usually fade after a single failure and sow despair because they lack mechanisms for learning and for converting information into institutions and structures.
From the standpoint of the philosophy of history, this rational durability within the flow of social experience is what Hegel called “the progress in the consciousness of freedom” [10]: a society, through its conflicts and failures and through the logical reflection upon its own experiences, reaches a higher level of self-awareness.
Just as scientific progress means an increasing understanding of the laws governing the physical world, historical progress means an increasing awareness of human freedom. In this sense, a revolutionary organization is not merely an instrument of power or a vehicle for transferring power. It is the material form of historical rationality, the embodiment of the movement’s memory, logic, and self-consciousness, preventing the blind repetition of history. Without such a structure, each generation is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.
6. The Characteristics of a Living and Dynamic Organization
Given the role of organization in transforming political and economic crises into democratic change, it is essential to consider the features of a dynamic and living organizational structure.
In recent decades, with the rise of complexity theory and systems biology, our understanding of the functioning and characteristics of natural and social systems has been transformed. As Humberto R. Maturana, biologist and cognitive theorist; Francisco J. Varela, biologist and philosopher; and Fritjof Capra, physicist and systems thinker, have shown, the principles governing living organisms can also be applied to social and economic institutions as well as political organizations [13, 14].
In this perspective, life exists not only in biological organisms but in any dynamic network of relations capable of reproducing, regulating, and renewing itself.
The classical approach to organization was modeled on the machine: hierarchical structure, centralization, and top-down control. But the modern systems understanding sees a living and enduring organization not as a machine but as a dynamic network of connections. In this view, real power arises from within the network, not from external commands or orders issued from above. Each unit or individual is part of the whole and, while possessing relative autonomy, remains in continuous exchange with the whole.
Such a structure, though ordered and organized, is an internally generated and self-organizing order, not an imposed or command-based one. According to Capra, life flows through networks; it resides not in the parts but in the relationships among them [14].
Several fundamental characteristics can be identified for a living and dynamic system.
- Self-organization: A living organization possesses internal order. Its rules, norms, and structures emerge from the interactions of its members rather than from bureaucracy. In social movements, this means growth from below and transformation based on lived experience.
- Learning and Feedback: A living system constantly learns from its environment. Failures and successes return as information, modifying the structure or becoming institutionalized within it. This principle mirrors the scientific logic of conjecture and refutation.
- Autopoiesis: As defined by Maturana and Varela [13], autopoiesis is a foundational feature of living systems, the capacity to reproduce themselves from within while preserving their internal patterns in the face of environmental change. For a social or political organization, this means possessing enduring values and principles that preserve the movement’s identity across shifting conditions.
- Embeddedness: A living organization is not isolated but part of a broader network of social, cultural, and ecological relations. This embeddedness is a condition of endurance. No organization can survive without understanding, connecting with, and rooting itself in the life-world of society.
- Dynamism and Identity Re-definition: A living entity constantly redefines its identity through ongoing interactions. Similarly, a living organization must be capable of redefining itself in response to new realities without abandoning its core principles.
Dynamic, deeply rooted organizations, unlike mechanical structures, flourish within crises because they possess the capacity to regenerate themselves. What guarantees the survival of an organization is not mechanical or formal stability but its ability to adapt creatively to changing conditions.
In a mechanical structure, environmental change is always experienced as a threat. In a living and dynamic organization, it becomes a source of growth. This quality of a political or social organization is nourished by methodical doubt, makes use of the scientific method to test and revise its tactics, and breathes within a network of human and ethical relationships.
Such an organization is viable because it maintains an organic balance between order and freedom, stability and change, thought and motivation. A living organization is a self-organizing process which, following the principle of conjecture and refutation in the realm of knowledge, embraces risk in its actions and subjects its beliefs and strategies fearlessly to the test of practice.
The secret of durability and efficacy for any organization or collective movement in the twenty-first century lies in this vitality.
7. An Analytical Framework for Contemporary Iran
Today’s Iran is a country engulfed in chronic mega-crises and profound social discontent, poised to seize the first real opportunity for a nationwide uprising and for overthrowing religious fascism. Three consecutive nationwide uprisings since 2017, coupled with the regime’s escalating repression and executions, signal that the ruling caste has reached a complete strategic dead end.
Under these conditions, the regime’s ideological and security apparatus understands perfectly the vital role of organization, structure, and a political alternative in steering protest movements and uprisings toward regime change and democratic transformation.
For this reason, alongside increasing repression and executions, the core of the regime’s propaganda is devoted to cultivating unscientific doubt regarding the existence of a democratic alternative, and to enabling groups that, under the guise of opposition, devote themselves to demonizing the only serious, organized, and longstanding resistance movement.
This unscientific doubt manifests itself, on the one hand, in denying the necessity of organization, and on the other, in denying the existence of a broad and organized resistance, even though decades of historical evidence demonstrate that from the very day Khomeini hijacked the anti-monarchical revolution, a continuous nationwide resistance has persisted.
The testimony to this includes 120,000 fallen martyrs of this struggle for freedom, among them the 30,000 defenseless political prisoners executed in the summer of 1988 on Khomeini’s orders, executed out of fear of expanding organizational networks inside the prisons. Another testimony is the regime’s daily reverse-language warnings about young people being deceived by the Monafeqin, the term used by the clerical regime for the Organization of the Mojahedin of the People of Iran (OMPI), revealing its persistent fear of the influential actions of the organized resistance.
In this context, a scientific outlook requires us to look beyond such propaganda and to examine the facts and experiences of decades of struggle, evaluating the performance of opposition forces in practice. The scientific method also teaches us to transform doubt into testable questions.
If Khomeini eliminated many of his opponents by means of the rhetoric of Islamic Revolution against imperialism, then which political organization refused to accept those claims, identified religious fanaticism as the principal threat to democracy, and recognized the danger of theocratic despotism from the beginning?
To understand the social dynamics just after the anti-monarchical revolution, one must ask which political organization defined freedom as the essence of the revolution and, directly challenging reactionary clericalism, raised the banner of a democratic interpretation of Islam? Which political organization, instead of sinking into day-to-day distractions or the pseudo-philosophical traps that Khomeini laid to dissipate the energy of the youth, used the post-revolutionary period to educate the youth, clarify its expectations from real democratic change, and build its organizational structures? And which organization organized the largest peaceful demonstration, on June 20, 1981, in Tehran, against the suppression of fundamental freedom,
When we turn to social and historical realities, the most decisive facts often concern those critical moments when a society or an organization must make a historical choice. It is in such moments that the ideological and organizational risk-taking capacity of a movement is exposed to historical testing, or in Popper’s terms, to severe refutation.
Which organization refused the disgrace of submitting to religious fascism and launched the broadest resistance at high organizational cost? Which organization, instead of seeking domination over the political scene, reached out to other democratic personalities and political forces and, as early as 1981, created the most enduring and long-lasting political coalition for democratic change? Which organization built the largest global campaigns to expose the human rights abuses of the Iranian regime and to defend the rights of the Iranian people?
Another fundamental parameter, especially in geopolitically sensitive countries like Iran, is the capacity for creative adaptation to regional shifts. Since it is now acknowledged even by the regime’s former warmongers that peace with Iraq had been attainable as early as 1982, after Iraqi forces withdrew, one must ask: which organization adopted peace as an official policy at that very moment, and despite accusations and slander from friend and foe alike, entered into negotiations with the Iraqi government as the representative of the Iranian resistance, ultimately forming the National Liberation Army and carrying out major military operations that forced Khomeini to accept the poisoned chalice of the ceasefire?
Which organization correctly assessed that the essence of the regime’s warmongering was not the defense of territory but the export of fundamentalism, and warned, years before its expansion across the Middle East, of Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to regional and global peace? Which organization, even under siege by the IRGC and its proxies in Iraq, built a city of resistance, culture, and music to broadcast the message of resistance to tyranny across Iran? And which organization exposed the regime’s secret nuclear weapons program, preventing a fascist theocracy from obtaining weapons of mass destruction?
Earlier, drawing on complexity theory, we noted that dynamic and deeply rooted organizations flourish in times of crisis because they possess the capacity for self-regeneration. One of the most striking phenomena in Iran has been the central role of women in resisting a misogynistic regime for whom the suppression of women, under the pretext of compulsory hijab, became the primary instrument of suppressing society as a whole.
In this regard, which organization undertook an internal revolution and organizational renewal, taking the greatest risks to establish the leadership and hegemony of women in order to eradicate patriarchy and liberate human energy within its own ranks?
In the later period, especially as Western governments increasingly pursued appeasement policies toward the regime under the illusion of reformability, one must remember which organization unequivocally declared that a viper cannot give birth to a dove.
Can any serious observer still defend the credibility of regime reformists? Which organization achieved the major legal victories necessary to remove its name from Western terrorist lists and thereby discredited the clerical regime and its allies?
Many individuals today claim to be advocates of regime change. But is this newfound opposition meant to support the longstanding revolutionary organization that has pursued a consistent strategy from the outset, and that these very same forces once demonized? Or is it meant to build hollow, mechanical pseudo-oppositions whose primary function is precisely to undermine organization and radical praxis against the regime’s repressive institutions?
Finally, in contrast to journalistic or day-to-day analyses that exaggerate the role of foreign powers in regime change, one must ask: which organization, recognizing new geopolitical dynamics and the expansion of uprisings in Iran, set up Resistance Units and expanded organized militant resistance inside Iranian cities to counteract repression and to structure the uprisings? Is not today’s confrontation between organized Resistance Units and the regime the central parameter in the equation of regime overthrow?
From the standpoint of the scientific method, answering these questions is indispensable for understanding contemporary Iranian history and the movement for regime change. The issue at stake is the presence or absence of organization and organizational experience in Iran, a matter of strategic importance given 120 years of struggle for democracy from the Constitutional Revolution movement to the present.
The essential point is that, based on performance in practice and not on self-description, we can now use a scientific lens to judge and to confront the reality that the survival of a half-century-long resistance against religious fascism, despite changing global and regional conditions, is owed to specific organizational features that carry important lessons for today’s generation.
Clearly, the existence of a pioneering and dynamic organization with long experience resisting both monarchical despotism and the most reactionary force in modern Iranian history is a foundational parameter for any realistic analysis of Iran’s conditions. If Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” today the very survival of Iran and its people depends on this organized resistance. In Cartesian terms, today one must say, “We resist, therefore we are.”
References and Notes
[1] René Descartes, Méditations métaphysiques. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1979.
[2] Alain Touraine, La Voix et le Regard: Sociologie des mouvements sociaux, Paris: Seuil, 1981.
A foundational work on new social movements. In this book, Touraine introduces the concepts of the social actor and meaningful action.
[3] Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978.
Tilly’s most important theoretical contribution to the study of collective action and revolution. The framework of resource mobilization and the revolutionary process is systematically developed here.
[4] Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
A classical and foundational work on revolution theory. Skocpol argues that revolutions occur when states become unable to respond to military or economic crises, when lower classes (peasants, workers) have networks and institutions capable of resistance, and when existing elites cannot reconstruct the political order.
[5] Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1966.
A seminal contribution in historical sociology and revolution theory. Contrary to gradual development theories, Moore argues that modernization often proceeds through violence and rupture; no society has democratized without intense class conflict and major crises.
[6] Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
[7] Anthony Marx, Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960–1990, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[8] Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge, 1963.
[9] Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Routledge, 1959 (original German edition, 1934). A foundational work in the philosophy of science and the formulation of falsifiability as a criterion of scientific inquiry.
[10] G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807; trans. A. V. Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
[11] William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
[12] Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
[13] Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, ed. John Keane, London: Hutchinson, 1985.
[14] Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980.
[15] Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, New York: Anchor Books, 2002.