Mansoor Hekmat

Mansoor Hekmat (1951–2002), born Zhoobin Razani, was an Iranian Marxist revolutionary and the founder of the worker-communist movement. After the 1979 revolution, he established the movement of Revolutionary Marxism and in 1983 co-founded the Communist Party of Iran together with the Komala movement. In 1991 he broke away to found the Worker-communist Party of Iran, rejecting both the Soviet model and Third World nationalism in favour of a humanist Marxism centred on working-class self-emancipation. Hekmat was a prolific writer and theorist whose works criticised nationalism, political Islam, and identity politics from a universalist perspective. He led the WPI from exile until his death from cancer on 4 July 2002 in London. His death triggered a leadership crisis that split the party into rival factions.