Iran’s Theocracy: An Uneasy Fusion of Religion and Political Economy

As mass protests erupted in Iran during the second week of January, 2026, Iran’s theocracy was on edge. That the protests stemmed from the dire economic conditions facing the people amid staggering inflation, including on basic food staples, rather than from foreign affairs, raises the question of whether religious clergy, including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are competent in making economic policy. Without the ongoing political pressure that can come from constituents in a representative democracy, or republic, it is no surprise that the protests in Iran quickly became mass riots. In other words, bad economic policy by religious clerics in power in an autocracy can easily result in popular protests abruptly erupting into rioting. The overreaching of functionaries based in the domain of religion into politics (including economic policy), such that the distinctiveness of the two domains is ignored or obfuscated, can be distinguished from the problems that go with autocracy.

On January 9, 2026, the theocracy signaled that the rioting would be dealt with severely. Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, in assuming a non-judicial political role, “vowed that punishment for protesters ‘will be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”[1] Separation of powers obviously did not exist in the Islamic regime. That both the internet and international calls were being blocked by the government signals that the protests could realistically result in the fall of the Islamic revolution in Iran. In other words, the severity of the government’s measures in shutting down communication can be read as indicative of a government whose days are numbered. In an interview, U.S. President Trump said that Iran’s dictator was already “looking to go someplace” because the situation on the streets was “getting very bad.”[2]

Demonstrating that expertise in theology does not extend to politics (as well as economics), Khamenei accused the rioters of “ruining their own streets . . . in order to please the president of the United States.”[3] Nothing was said about the hyperinflation that was putting even basic foodstuffs out of reach for an increasing number of people as the reason for the protests. Nothing was said about Crown Prince Reza Pahavi having called for the protests on January 8, 2025, and that the protests “included cries in support of the shah,” which can be distinguished from chants in favor of President Trump, which did not occur.[4] Pahavi was not calling for the United States to invade Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rhetoric was therefore very poor from a political standpoint (i.e., his statement was incorrect), and he did not address the reeling economy in any constructive way in terms of advocating economic reform that actually had a chance of working. Knowledge in theology does not carry over onto the domains of politics and economics, so the overreach is problematic.

This critique can be distinguished from one premised on the American separation of “church and state,” which actually could use some work in American jurisprudence because “In God We Trust” is printed on the currency. To be against a government establishing a religion (e.g., proclaiming a religion to be the official religion) is different than being against a religion superimposing its distinctive criteria onto a civic government because an over-reaching of the political domain into the religious domain is distinct from the religious domain overreaching into the political realm, even though both instantiate the conflation of two distinct domains of human experience. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should have stuck to theology as a cleric rather than try to run a government, and his response to the economic protests—even that such protests morphed so quickly into riots—demonstrates the intractably problematic nature of overreaching from one domain onto another, qualitatively different, one as if the criteria and credentials of the former could and should supplant those of the latter in the latter.

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1. Jon Gambrell, “Iran Supreme Leader Signals Upcoming Crackdown on Protesters ‘Ruining Their Own Streets’ for Trump,” APnews.com, January 9, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

On the Centenary of the Russian Revolution: Government as Artificial

On November 7, 2017, Russian soldiers marched in a military parade in Red Square in Moscow to honor the soldiers who had marched in a military parade on November 7, 1941 before going to the front to defend the city from invading Nazi troops. Commemoration of the centenary of the Russian Revolution was relegated to side streets “in a pale shadow of grand Soviet demonstrations on Red Square.”[1] Even though Russian communists and likeminded activists from around the world marched through central Moscow, the mood was subdued in spite of the milestone.

In Soviet times, November 7^th was a major holiday in the USSR, with demonstrations held in every major city and Red Square filled with tanks and missile launchers, yet just decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union November 7th was just another day. In 2005, President Vladimir Putin cancelled the holiday and created a Unity Day instead to be on November 4^th. What for generations of Soviets had been a major holiday was suddenly just another day, with even the centenary of the revolution being just a side-show. Societal fixtures, even if trumpeted by governments, may seem permanent, yet the artificiality in government-sanctioned holidays becomes readily apparent once a regime-change has occurred.

It could even be said that governments are themselves artificial rather than natural, given the innate instinct for self-determination and freedom of movement evinced in our species. Governmental social realities can be viewed as artificial, especially given the tendency of humans in positions of authority to expand their control and that of their respective institutions. The Soviet Union definitely suffered from such artificial control; even the Russian participants marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution preferred being able to attend by free choice instead of being ordered to do so. As the French case confirms, even a well-intended revolution can go dreadfully wrong; such is the nature of government, yet without it human society would be a mess. Like governmental holidays, government itself can nonetheless be viewed as artificial, and particular regimes as inherently temporary.

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[1] Ivan Nechpurenko, “Communists Mark Russian Revolution’s Centenary in Moscow,” The New York Times, November 7, 2017.

Social Harmony and Toxic Chemicals in China

According to the New York Times in 2012, the Chinese had become increasingly willing “to take to the streets despite the perils of openly challenging the country’s authoritarian government.” Even more surprising, government officials had actually acquiesced in some notable cases. Given the raw nature of power, particularly under authoritarian auspices, revolution rather than gradual reform may still be the most likely means by which democracy can bloom under the golden, albeit hazy, sun.
In October 2012, local officials in the coastal city of Ningbo promised “to halt the expansion of a petrochemical plant after thousands of demonstrators [had] clashed with the police during three days of protests that spotlighted the public’s mounting discontent with industrial pollution. . . . The project, an $8.8 billion expansion of a refinery owned by the state-run behemoth Sinopec, was eagerly backed by the local government, which [had] been promoting a vast industrial zone outside Ningbo, a city of 3.4 million people in Zhejiang Province. Residents were particularly unnerved by one major component of the project: the production of paraxylene, a toxic petrochemical known as PX that is a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of polyester, paints and plastic bottles. Many residents [contended] that the concentration of polluting factories in the Ningbo Chemical Industrial Zone [had] led to a surge in cancer and other illnesses.” Lest it be assumed the officials had suddenly “got religion” as far as democracy is concerned, the New York Times provides a more realistic explanation:

“Although local officials were undoubtedly alarmed by the size and ferocity of the protests, their decision to bend so quickly was also probably influenced by the coming series of meetings that will determine China’s next generation of leaders. The ruling Communist Party, always eager to keep a lid on public discontent, is especially nervous about any disruptions that might mar the 18th Party Congress.”

Culturally, the Chinese officials—like the Chinese people generally—undoubtedly felt the need to protect or restore social harmony. At close range, loud protests ring out like a frontal assault on such harmony. The protests began “when farmers blocked a road near the refinery, grew over the weekend as thousands of students and middle-class residents converged on a downtown square carrying handmade banners and wearing surgical masks painted with skull and bones. . . . (T)he demonstrations turned violent when riot police fired tear gas and began to beat and drag away protesters. At one point, according to people who were there, marchers tossed bricks and bottles at the police. At least 100 people were detained, according to some estimates, although most were later released.” Accordingly, the immediate instinct of the officials would have been to do whatever would be most likely to stop the disruption as soon as possible.
In the long term, however, social harmony requires some degree of fit between public policy and popular sentiment. While not necessarily the will of the people, the intensity of political protests can provide some indication of the extent of a breach or gap. Whether by deflating or squashing, short-circuiting a protest at its outset in a dire attempt to restore the appearance of social harmony can mean that public officials lose touch with the popular mood and thus “fly blind.” The result could be a revolution in ten or twenty years, the ferocity of which could come as a complete surprise to the party officials.
Put another way, the apparent success of protests could belie the more subterranean possibility that public officials were still impervious to public demands. “In 2007, protesters in the coastal city of Xiamen, in Fujian Province, successfully forced the relocation of a PX plant that had been planned just 10 miles from downtown. In August 2012, officials in Dalian, in northeast China, announced that they would shut down a PX plant there after thousands of residents angrily confronted the riot police.” However, as of the fourth quarter of 2012, that factory was still operating. “We’ve seen the same pattern over and over again,” said Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. “Ignoring public concerns leads to confrontation. We can’t resolve all our environmental issues through street action. The cost is just too high.” That is to say, protests do not guarantee that government officials will heed popular sentiment, and the result of continued protests could be violent.
Seeming to acquiesce could simply be a strategy by which to assuage the public. “The announcement is just a way to ease tensions,” said Yu Xiaoming, a critic of the plant who took part in negotiations with the authorities on Sunday. Even if paraxylene is not produced in Ningbo, the chemical could be quietly made elsewhere. A pattern of such apparent placating, moreover, could give everyone the false impression of social and political cohesion between the Chinese people and the government. Minimizing broader knowledge that the protests had taken place only contributes to the misleading picture of social harmony instead of strife. Although Ningbo residents “held aloft smartphones and computer tablets and flooded microblog sites with images and vivid descriptions of the running battles with the police,” for example, the “Chinese news media carried no reports of the protests.”
In spite of the appearance being constructed by the apparent “listening” by government officials and the government-media censorship, pressure could nonetheless build and possibly erupt in contagious strife spiraling uncontrollably into full-blown revolution. That it would seem to come out of nowhere would only heighten the fear on both sides, and thus the sense of a lack of control and related violence. Any apparent gradual “opening up” toward democracy, as in permitting the residents of Hong Kong to vote for some offices, would be only on the surface, and even misleading.
One might imagine a flight-control tower with radar screens overstating the distance between planes in the air. Flight-control might dismiss the concerns of the pilots and even permit more planes into the area. A mid-air collision would come as a complete surprise to everyone, even though such an outcome would be more likely due to the perceptual misalignment. In terms of China, a full-blown revolution could be extremely disruptive not only within China, but also for the world given China’s sheer size and economic role in the global economy. Gradual reform in China is in everyone’s interest—even those officials interested in maintaining social harmony. 

Source:

Andrew Jacobs, “Protests Over Chemical Plant Force Chinese Officials to Back Down,” The New York Times, October 29, 2012.

Marx and Chinese Dynasties: A Postmortem on Occupy Wall Street

My essay that suggests that the Occupy Wall Street protests should have focused on the large corporation itself (i.e., that the large corporate form be expunged from modern society) rather than on a myriad of redistribution agendas resonates with Marx’s theory of revolution. In that theory, the proletariat finally throws off the chains and subdues the hitherto hegemonic capitalists in a materialist reading of Hegel's idea that history progresses toward greater freedom of the human spirit. The redistributive push of the Occupy movement fellf short because even increased redistribution advocated would have been within extant the political-economic system that the corporations dominate and run (i.e., including Congress). If the protesters were in fact serious about confronting corporate capitalism, their movement should have been radical rather than reformist because reforms are within the system that works for and by corporations.
A radical agenda makes the existence of the modern corporation itself the issue. Absent taking that entity out of the equation (i.e., system), corporations will be able to relegate any proposal geared to “reforming” the system. In 2011, the movement itself was enabling this by allowing the protesters’ general message to pivot from "corporate capitalism" to "crony capitalism." This subtle shift was in the corporations' interest, for it meant that they themselves were no longer the target (i.e., only the "bad" ones).
Even the radical alternative, wherein the very existence of the huge concentrations of private capital are the target, may have been doomed to the sidelines of American political discourse, and thus utter failure, considering the power of corporations over the (corporate) media, which could turn a radical impulse in to a reformist whimper. Additionally, corporate CEO's could press Congress to set the FBI and even the CIA against (even a reformist) movement deemed to be a threat to the moneyed interests.
Cutting large corporations down to size from within the system so as to be consistent with being contained by democratic means may be like expecting water to go up-stream. There's the expression, You Can't fight City Hall. This holds especially if city hall is hidden at the top of towering skyscrapers on Wall Street. A lot of pressure would need to build up for an external “shock” to overcome such a system, given the inherent tendency of corporate capitalism to mitigate the power of radical agendas by labeling them as "extreme." Marx believed that at some point the pressure from the proletariat would reach the threshold at which the lava of discontent can break out of the strictures of the system undergirding the huge private concentrations of capital. I tend to agree, though I think a lot of pressure would need to build up for the energy to be sufficient to overcome the momentum of the system’s status quo. The process of pressure-building is perhaps much longer than the protesters suspect because they discount the corporations' wherewithal to effectively use the media and political elite to preserve the system by relegating threats.
It may be that we need to view the pressure-building process from a longer-term perspective. Rather than getting caught up on the sensationalistic “play by play” stories on the protests in various cities around the world, we could view the movement itself as a wave on a rising tide that might not reach shore as a tsunami until well after we are dead and gone. The tide itself, even if not the tsunami, is perhaps inexorable if the system is indeed heavily biased in favor of the "haves" at the expense of the "have-nots." In other words, in the self-perpetuating political economy, the holding companies will only get stronger; individual companies may downsize, but that is oriented to making them stronger. Even so, the efficiency in economy of scale suggests that as long as the current system continues to exist, the large corporation will endure as a basic form in corporate capitalism.
The Occupy Wall Street movement can be interpreted in retrospect as having said that the injustice latent in the large corporation itself outweighs its greater efficiency. That injustice transcends that of economic inequality to touch on the injustice of a republic-turned-plutocracy. Even the protesters recognized that a clear break from the present system would be necessary to thwart the trend away toward increasing economic inequality and decreasing representative democracy. In other words, reform is not sufficient, and yet the power needed to propel a radical alternative requires overwhelming pressure.
A political-economic cycle going back and forth between democracy and plutocracy may be natural; it may express the dynamic tension between popular rule and concentrated power. Such a cycle may be like that of Chinese dynasties through Chinese history. At some point, a given dynasty (such as the Ming) would inevitably fell on its own corrupt weight only to be replaced by a new one (the Qing) that would in turn eventually likewise fall. To be sure, democracy was not in the mix (until 1911, and then only briefly), but the cycle is relevant in that it says something about the nature of concentrated power to eventually collapse from its own weight rather than from an external shock or force. 
Confucius lived when the Chou dynasty was in decline. Could he have known how close that dynasty was to succumbing to the next one? Similarly, do Americans know precisely when the volcano of popular discontent will erupt and level or at least greatly reduce the power of Wall Street?  Given the amount of vested power invested in the status quo, considerable pressure is requisite. It is easy to see, therefore, why the Occupy Wall Street movement was marginalized so.