“We Need a Humanist Alternative to Capitalism”

— While the Russian invasion of Ukraine threw many leftists all over the world into an identity crisis, with some condoning or even openly supporting Putin’s pretext of resisting NATO’s eastward expansion, some members of  the Iranian opposition — and you personally — saw no difficulty in taking the side of Ukraine’s independence. Why is that? 

— The broader Iranian progressive opposition is against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because Iranians have suffered from Russia’s strong relationship with and support for the Islamic Republic. Russia provides the Islamic Republic with nuclear power plants and weapons. It buys Iranian drones, missiles and uses them in assaults on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. Russia also votes in favor of Iran in the U.N.

On March 2, 2022, Iranian feminist leader and human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh issued a statement condemning Russia’s invasion and defending Ukraine. Calling on the Secretary-General of the U.N. to use “all international means to end this blatant aggression,” she wrote:

“In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and standing by them, I say that world peace is not possible without standing up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and without support for Ukraine.” 

Unfortunately, much of the Iranian left, both inside and outside Iran, still repeats the Russian disinformation narrative that this is a proxy war instigated by NATO. They adhere to the Stalinist perspective, which only sees U.S. and Western imperialism as the source of the world’s problems and continues to justify the actions of Russia today, even though Russia no longer even  has a claim to socialism.  

My position is rooted in my history of opposing the Stalinist so-called anti-imperialism, which led much of the Iranian left to support Islamic fundamentalists after the 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed king. I come from a branch of Marxism, called Marxist-Humanism, which was founded by the Ukrainian-born philosopher and feminist Raya Dunayevskaya. Dunayevskaya developed a theory of state capitalism to oppose totalitarianism in the Soviet Union back in 1941 and then developed that theory further in relation to totalitarian state capitalism in Maoist China. I have also learned a great deal from dialogues with Ukrainian socialist feminists and other Ukrainian independent socialists, including Oksana Dutchak, Yuliya Yurchenko, Hanna Perekhoda, Artem Chapeye, and Vlodyslav Starodubtsev. They strongly challenge the view promoted by Western leftists that the war in Ukraine is a “proxy war.” They are deeply rooted in Ukrainian history, opposing Russian imperialism while simultaneously fighting for labor and women’s rights and gender emancipation inside Ukraine. They oppose capitalism from a humanist perspective, genuinely caring about and working in solidarity with domestic and international struggles from the Middle East to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I have also learned a lot from Alla Solod and the Feminist Workshop in Lviv while producing a short film about feminist solidarity with Ukraine. Despite all the hardships of life under Russian bombardment, they patiently sought out and edited recordings of statements by Ukrainian feminists and welcomed contributions by U.S. Black and Iranian feminists in solidarity with Ukraine. 

— I would like you to share your experience with the Iranian opposition in exile, as persecutions and repressive legislation in Russia have forced most dissidents out of the country. Today, we receive less and less information coming from independent Russian journalists and researchers; most of the news is simply reinterpreted by opposition media from official government sources. Do you think the opposition is capable of accurately representing developments on the ground? How has the Iranian opposition tried to make up for the lack of reliable information?

‍— Between the late 1990s and up until the war between Israel/U.S. and Iran in June 2025, the internet created opportunities to communicate with Iranian dissidents online. However, since then, the Iranian government has cracked down even more on dissidents and has closed many of the doors to communication. More and more progressives have been arrested, and some have been executed.  

Zamaneh, a highly progressive, independent, Persian-language media outlet based in the Netherlands, has younger, recently exiled Iranian writers and continues to receive contributions from inside Iran. There are also other progressive websites and journalists in exile that do communicate with people inside Iran. 

— There’s a growing tendency among the Russian liberal opposition in exile to see themselves as the legitimate representatives of anti-war Russians, and they have attempted to form “governments in exile.” These attempts have predictably failed. As contacts with people inside the country diminish, some seem to hope that the regime will be removed by the West rather than by the Russians themselves. The recent U.S. and Israel attacks on Iran seem to have aroused similar sentiments among the Iranian opposition. How viable is this attitude? Do you think it is inevitable? Could your experience with Iranian opposition politics reveal more than these simplistic, authoritarian tendencies among the “pro-democracy” forces?

— The most telling aspect of the Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran during the June 2025 war was the bombing of Evin prison. Evin Prison is a symbol of progressive dissidents and the place where some of the most promising future leaders of Iran were being held. Various prisoners, family visitors, and supportive staff members were killed and maimed during the bombing. The surviving prisoners were then transferred to prisons with much worse conditions.

This bombing demonstrated that neither Israel nor the U.S. wants to see progressive leaders rise to power in Iran.

They either hope to promote the Iranian monarchists or make a deal with a faction of the current regime — or both.  

The June 2025 war resulted in over 1,000 deaths and 5,000 injuries inside Iran. It caused massive damage to infrastructure and made the already polluted Iranian air even more poisonous. It also broke the illusions of many of those Iranians who believed that an invasion by Israel and the U.S. might save them. However, this does not mean that the monarchist opposition has lost its entire base.  

As for the Russian opposition, I don’t see how they can think that the Trump administration, which is allied with Putin both ideologically and politically, will overthrow the Russian regime.

— Is feminism associated with the West in Iran? Do you think there could be a non-Western, non-secular feminism? Drawing on the experience of the recent “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement of 2022–2023, do you think the feminist agenda could gain widespread support in Iranian society? 

— Feminism has native roots in Iran, dating back to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 and the efforts by various women leaders to promote education for girls and women. Over the past thirty years, Iranian feminists have translated some works by Western feminists into Persian. We already have independent Iranian feminists inside Iran. However, I do not think it is possible to have a non-secular feminism. At the very least, feminism requires gender equality and reproductive rights, including rights to abortion. It requires laws that are free of religious dogma. Furthermore, after experiencing over four decades of the Islamic Republic, Iranian society now mostly wants the separation of religion and state.

What came to be known as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in late 2022 and early 2023 was not a full-fledged feminist revolution, but it did have some distinct feminist features. For example, university students made efforts to desegregate university cafeterias and classrooms, which were subject to gender segregation. The movement also included the widespread participation of working-class women, including Kurdish women from the north, Arab women from the south, and Baluchi women from southeastern Iran, the country’s most economically deprived and misogynistic province.  

Over the course of seven months, Iranian police and army forces arrested more than 20,000 protesters. More than 500 people were killed during the protests. Four youths were hanged for participating in the protests at the time, and more youth participants arrested then have been executed in the last three years. Many protesters, especially women, were shot in the eyes or genitals by sharpshooters. Many were raped by police, both in and out of prison. Some who were raped and tortured death were announced as having committed suicide. Thousands of schoolgirls were poisoned.  

Various feminist and labor groups in Iran issued statements articulating their demands for a future democratic Iran. These statements called for the following things: free and equal-quality education for women and men at all levels, without gender segregation; equal participation of women in social, political, and economic sphere; reproductive and abortion rights; divorce and custody rights; the banning of female genital mutilation, child marriage, and polygamy; the criminalization of gender violence and sexual harassment; the categorization of domestic work as onerous labor, requiring better compensation; and legal and health services for incarcerated women. Some feminists argued that the demands should extend beyond the minimum level of civil society to include human rights for oppressed national, religious, and sexual minorities, as well as migrants (mostly Afghans), and advocate for social justice and positive discrimination, which in the U.S. we call affirmative action.

However, three years later we are facing death sentences for several imprisoned Iranian feminists. In September 2023, the Iranian government passed the Hijab and Chastity Law, mandating stricter enforcement of the Islamic dress code and imposing penalties ranging from fines to property expropriation and imprisonment. Reported rates of femicide, gender-based violence, and suicide among women have increased. The execution rate of prisoners in general, and of women prisoners, in particular have increased. Since January 2025, the Iranian government has also deported 1.8 million Afghan migrants from Iran. It is also promoting hatred against Iran’s Afghan migrant population to divert attention away from its own destructive history and policies.  

The contradiction between the mass support received by the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and the current retrogressive developments can be explained by the regime. The economic, political, social, and environmental pressures on society, combined with the latest open shooting war between the Israel-U.S. coalition and Iran, as well as the massive damage done to the Iranian infrastructure and psyche, do not allow room for progressive development.  

— When you condemned Putin’s invasion, you explained that the Russian state frequently employs misogynistic rhetoric. Furthermore, the Russian state is obsessed with controlling women’s bodies and forcing so-called family values on everyone. Ironically, these values are based on demographic indicators rather than spirituality or the Bible. Do you think women’s rights are more important than “family values”? Or do “family values” merely serve as a justification for life-threatening misogynistic policies?

— The Right has defined “family values” as patriarchy, homophobia, traditional family roles, and structures that oppress women and children. These values do not allow for the creation of loving and caring family relationships. Examples of such “values” include Putin’s policies in Russia and Ukraine, the Trump administration’s implementation of Project 2025, and the Iranian regime’s imposition of Shari’a law. Some socialist feminists who have critiqued the traditional family and instead sought to redefine family values. They envision liberated family values as non-oppressive and non-exploitative human relations in which people do not use each other as mere means to some other end but genuinely care about each other’s growth, development, and well-being.

This effort includes reproductive and abortion rights, as well as the rejection of norms that promote aggression and domination among men and obedience among women.

However, there is much more to transcending capitalist and precapitalist oppressive gender norms.     

— Given the shared “traditionalist” agenda of the global far-right, do you think feminism offers a unifying response, at least for the left?

— Feminism can offer a unifying response to the global far right if it seeks to go beyond the limits of capitalism, whether private or state.

One of the major barriers to feminist solidarity today is careerism, which reduces feminism to the narrow promotion of one’s own agenda.

Whether advocating Western liberal capitalism or postcolonial and anti-U.S. imperialism, feminism has reduced liberation to achieving power and domination. Some anti-imperialist feminists are also apologists for Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, and Cuban authoritarianism.

The socialist feminism that I advocate challenges the commodification and dehumanization of women and gender non-binary people, as well as the alienated human relations under capitalism. In my book Socialist Feminism: A New Approach (Pluto Press, 2022), I discuss developments in gender relations and authoritarianism in the 21st century, critically evaluating socialist feminist theories of gender oppression and exploring socialist-humanist and feminist alternatives to capitalism and domination. 

For feminism to offer a unifying response to the rise of authoritarianism and fascism, it must develop a humanist alternative.  

‍— Could you tell us a little more about your book? Which feminist thinkers do you find useful today? What is lacking, and how can this gap be addressed? 

— I argue that in the twenty-first century, we need a humanist alternative to capitalism that challenges all forms of domination and transcends the oppressive models of the former USSR and Maoist China, as well as more recent claims to socialism, such as in Venezuela.  

My effort to rethink socialist feminism is an attempt to get to the heart of the problem that faces us: transcending capitalism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism at structural and personal levels, transforming human relations, and developing thoughtful relationships among humans, between mind and body, and between humanity and nature. The socialist feminist conceptual frameworks discussed in this book — Social Reproduction, Alienation, Black Feminism, and Queer Theories — have all been pathways to asking questions about developing a humanist alternative.

Ecofeminist thinkers like Maria Mies and Ariel Salleh, as well as other autonomist feminists like Silvia Federici and Kathi Weeks, have made important proposals, such as reclaiming the commons, creating cooperatives, and establishing a universal basic income. However, they still do not address the question of how to overcome alienated labor. 

I argue that, while Marx’s body of ideas should be distinguished from totalitarian forms of rule that have claimed his name, his humanist philosophy as a whole advocates revolutionizing human relations, including what Ann Ferguson called “affective practices” in 2018. Marx’s understanding of capitalism does not limit it to a system based on economic inequality. Rather, he identifies it as a system based on alienated labor that takes the division of mental and manual labor and the separation of mind and body to the extreme. To him, the degradation and violence that women experience are clear manifestations of this separation. 

Marx’s affirmative alternative is not limited to reclaiming the commons and collectivizing labor, or abolishing labor and relying solely on machines and technology to do the work.

He advocates for the emancipation of human beings from alienated labor and “human self-alienation” in favor of a conscious existence, and a two-way relationship between the mind and body as the key to human liberation. 

Black feminist thinker Audre Lorde poses the question of labor and life in The Uses of the Erotic, offering a glimpse of a non-alienated existence. For Lorde, the key element of emancipation is a conscious existence where the mind, body, and heart communicate with each other and are in tune with the self and others, whether those others are people or work. For her, emancipation is an existence in which we are not fragmented, but rather have the opportunity to develop all of our natural and acquired talents. 

— Today, there seems to be a divide between those interested in the issues of feminism and gender and those interested in “big politics.” You see it very clearly with the Russian opposition. While men predominantly discuss military maneuvers, international politics, and economics, feminists discuss abortion bans. The opposite is rarely the case. Why do you think this happens? Does this division help solve problems, or does it create more of them?

— While it is nothing new for those interested in big politics to ignore gender oppression, we also need to ask why so many feminists focus only on our particular struggles as women or nonbinary people without developing a global view demonstrating command of global politics and socioeconomics. Perhaps it is because that is an incredibly difficult challenge. It is easier to focus on a particular topic without always having a global view.

Developing an alternative to capitalism requires a global view that transcends divisions between individuality, gender-specific struggles, and universal struggles and ideas of human emancipation.  

The structure of my book attempts to help feminists break down these divisions. It also concludes with ideas for socialist feminist global revolutionary organizing, including solidarity with Ukrainian and Russian feminists. 

The world desperately needs ethical, worldly socialist feminists who genuinely care about the future of humanity and recognize the urgency of the current moment, when fascism is on the rise and our gains are quickly eroding.

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