Jalili’s Indictment Against the Middle Class

Jalili’s Indictment Against the Middle Class

Why Conservatives and Hardliners Fear the Middle Class

Jalili’s indictment against the middle class, according to Iran Gate, apparently highlights the visible anger and hatred in Vahid Jalili’s second sentence, which faced criticism. However, the important point is the first sentence: ‘There is no such thing as a middle class.’

The late Karl Marx also believed that there is no such thing as a middle class, meaning there are only two classes: the capitalist class and the proletariat. But Marx made this claim in his critique of Western European societies.

Denying the existence of the middle class was a necessity for revolution in Western European societies, because accepting the existence of a middle class prevented the social and political polarization necessary for revolution. The middle class, in itself, indicated the inaccuracy of Marx’s description of the capitalist system, as Marx claimed that in capitalism, the poor become poorer and the capitalists become more affluent.

While the existence of a middle class and the possibility of its expansion meant that the proletariat could be hopeful for the future, meaning any proletarian could improve their living standards and become a member of the middle class. When there is a chance for a better life, there is no need for revolution and getting shot.

When Vahid Jalili says there is no middle class in Iranian society, he is essentially supporting those who advocate for the necessity of a revolution against the current political system. If there is no middle class, then Iranian society is logically divided into two classes: the poor and the affluent.

And since the country’s economic conditions scream that the majority of people are not among the affluent, the majority are poor. Naturally, the majority of the poor have no interest in the ballot box and gradual positive changes through reforms, because such people are at their wits’ end and their bread has been taken away. The protests in December 2017 and November 2019, as well as the 2020 protests in Khuzestan and Isfahan, and even the repeated and continuous protests of the people in Sistan and Baluchestan in recent incidents, had strong economic motivations.

The increasing poverty-stricken nature of the protests indicates the erosion of the middle class. In fact, those who were part of the middle class until yesterday have now fallen below the poverty line and become members of the lower class. One of the reasons for the growth of violence among protesters in recent years is their loss of patience in the face of economic pressures.

The foreign policy envisioned by Vahid Jalili and of course Saeed Jalili is not aimed at poverty alleviation in Iranian society. Saeed Jalili supports continuing confrontation with the Western world, while Vahid Jalili supports the necessary cultural transformations to ideologically motivate the increasing number of poor people in the country to continue bearing the economic burden of anti-Western policies.

Anyone who does not support the continuation of such policies is considered by Vahid Jalili to be without ideals and Western-influenced. The concept of Western influence has been so broadly defined by extreme right-wingers that the rational demands of the majority of Iranians are considered a sign of their Western influence.

But aside from these points, the main issue is the shrinking of the middle class in Iran. This trend allows Vahid Jalili to claim that there is no middle class in Iran. Certainly, Jalili could not have made such a claim during Khatami’s government.

The gradual erosion of the middle class began with the rise of Ahmadinejad’s government, a government that Vahid Jalili supported until 2011. The middle class in Iran, after the revolution, voted for at least two decades without achieving the desired result. The worsening economic situation in the country has naturally reduced the number of middle-class members. Therefore, if Mr. Jalili thinks that by portraying a rich-poor dichotomy, he is magnifying the supporters of the country’s anti-Western current, he should know that many of those who voted for Khatami in 1997 or Rouhani in 2013 and showed with their vote that they want a normal foreign policy that contributes to the country’s economic growth and development, are now considered part of the lower classes.

These individuals, whatever they may be, are not anti-Western or radical right-wingers. They are the same people who, in the 1990s or early 2010s, were considered by Mr. Jalili as Western-influenced and without ideals. But the ideal of these individuals was democracy, and now that they have fallen below the poverty line, Mr. Jalili should not fall into the illusion that the ranks of the radical right have increased.

The slogan ‘Reza Shah, may your soul be blessed’ was also mainly heard during the protests of December 2017 and November 2019. Therefore, the lower classes, especially those who have recently become lower class, even if they have given up on democracy, have not turned towards Mr. Jalili’s desired direction. How much the middle class, especially in the 2010s, has declined is a question for economists to answer, but certainly, there is still a middle class in Iran.

However, if Vahid Jalili’s claim is correct, it means the continuation of protests that create a quasi-revolutionary situation in the country. In fact, Vahid Jalili’s incorrect claim benefits the monarchists. Supporters of the Pahlavi dynasty rightly claim that the Shah’s economic policy in the 1960s and 1970s benefited the middle class, especially the new middle class. They wrongly accuse the new middle class of betrayal.

The betrayal of the middle class is a situation that modernist dictators sometimes find themselves in. Such a situation also arose in the 1980s in Brazil, South Korea, and Chile, leading to the fall of dictatorship in these three countries. A modernist dictator strengthens the middle class through modernization, economic growth, and development-oriented policies, but because their modernization does not include the political sphere,

meaning they are unwilling to embrace democracy and political development, they are brought down from power by the uprising of the middle class. The point is that in 1979, the middle class was the main force of the Iranian revolution.

The audience of Dr. Shariati at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad and also the entourage of Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris were mainly members of the middle class. According to Vahid Jalili’s claim, recent policies have destroyed the middle class.

According to economists’ definitions, fifty percent of society forms the lower class, deciles 1 to 5. Forty percent of people are part of the middle class, deciles 6 to 9. Ten percent form the upper class.

The nouveau riche that Vahid Jalili refers to are naturally part of the upper class because he describes them as affluent. So if there is no middle class in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 90 percent of Iranians are poor and part of the lower class of society. Even the staunchest opponents of the Islamic Republic do not make such a claim. Jalili probably knows that the middle class in political sociology, especially in the literature on the transition to democracy, is a progressive and respectable social class that has been at the forefront of democratization in many countries around the world for the past fifty years.

Therefore, to say that the honorable title of the middle class is not befitting of the opponents of the current situation, he has labeled a minority of them as wealthy nouveau riche and placed them in the upper class, while the remaining dissatisfied and protesting citizens have been placed in the lower class, lest the honorable title of the middle class be attributed to those influenced by the West.

As a result, the person who is supposed to guide the programs of the state television and radio in line with the interests of the Islamic Republic has introduced nearly 90 percent of Iranians as part of the poor and low-income lower class. Does such a claim indicate good governance or is it an endorsement of the words of those advocating for a revolution against the Islamic Republic?