The Workers World Party presented a similar portrait of the group, saying in an August 10 statement that Hezbollah has “rallied the forces fighting against Zionist expansionism” and “taken up the mantle of the resistance to U.S. imperialism.”

Other middle-class radicals protesting Tel Aviv’s bloody invasion of Lebanon have presented similar views.

But these are not accurate portrayals of Hezbollah, or Hizb’Allah, the “Party of God.”

Hezbollah is a bourgeois political party, not a religious group, with extensive capitalist investments. Its primary goal is to set up an “Islamic Republic” in Lebanon, modeled on the government of Iran, its main backer. It was founded in the early 1980s by a group of Shiite clerics working with the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. These clerics remain the central leaders of the group.

Khomeini’s government came to power after the 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed regime of the shah. That was a profound political and social upheaval that opened political space for workers and peasants, women, youth, and oppressed nationalities. The cleric-dominated bourgeois regime, however, unleashed a counterrevolution attempting to stifle the gains of the working-class revolt that threatened the interests of the propertied classes.

Hezbollah’s founders in Lebanon adopted the same name used by extralegal squads in Iran that physically attacked workers’ organizations that didn’t agree with the course of the Khomeini government. That course led to the reversal of most of the gains of the 1979 revolution.

“Iran’s financial involvement in the bulk of our development and social services is not a secret,” said Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s current general secretary, according to Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, author of In the Path of Hizbullah.

Hezbollah’s military forces were trained and are supplied by the government of Iran in cooperation with Damascus.

These ties have enabled Hezbollah to develop a vast system of political patronage, public works, and social services through which the party ensures support in local and national elections.

Among its key sources of funds are “Hizbullah’s business investments, taking advantage of Lebanon’s free market economy,” says Hamzeh in his book. “While figures are not available about Hizbullah’s investments, reportedly the party has established a commercial network that includes dozens of supermarkets, gas stations, department stores, restaurants, construction companies, and travel agencies.”

A 1996 poll to determine popular support for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, said Judith Palmer Harik, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, showed that “44 percent of the Shiites sampled of high socio-economic status indicated affiliation with Hezbollah.”  
 
Roots of Hezbollah
Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s as one of the groups that took part in the resistance to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and subsequent occupation of part of the country by Tel Aviv at the time. But it was modeled from the beginning after the capitalist government in Tehran.

That government came to power following a mass popular insurrection led by the working class that toppled the Iranian monarchy. The movement that overthrew the shah had the potential to lead to workers and peasants taking political power. However, there was no working-class leadership strong enough to push the revolution in that direction.

As an editorial in the July 7, 2003, Militant said, it is not true that “the current Iranian regime, in a warped form, is a defender of the remaining gains of the revolution.” The editorial pointed out that “there remains little momentum from the 1979 revolution today. It’s been more than 20 years since the early 1980s when the Iranian toilers poured to the battlefront to defend their country from the U.S.-inspired invasion by Baghdad aimed at destroying the gains of the anti-shah revolt.

“The great revolution against the monarchy did strengthen the Iranian nation vis-à-vis imperialism. It was truly one of the magnificent popular revolutions of the last quarter of the 20th century. But after 24 years the gains in the relationship of forces have been eroded.”

From the early years of the revolution, the Khomeini government used not only state power but goon-type forces to target workers’ groups and others it felt may threaten the interests of the propertied classes.

In her book Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, historian Nikki Keddie says the Khomeini regime had ties to “paralegal forces like…the violent groups called hezbollah. These groups disrupted demonstrations and attacked dissidents.”

Targets included socialists and trade union leaders who sought to advance independent working-class political action.

It is those methods and that course that Hezbollah’s leadership has worked to emulate, not the working-class traditions of the U.S. civil rights movement.
 
 
Related articles:
After cease-fire, Israeli forces begin pullout from Lebanon
Toronto: Communist League candidates join protest, oppose Ottawa’s support of Israeli war
10,000 in D.C. protest Israeli attack on Lebanon
U.S. gov’t revokes visas for 100 Iranians  
 
 
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