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Archive: Nov. 7 12 18 25 |
November 21st |
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On this day (Nov 21) in the year of 488AD, one thousand three hundred and sixty years
before Mars's Communist Manifesto was published, an Iranian thinker, Mazdak, the son of Bamdad from the city
of Istakhr (the present day Shiraz) started preaching his ideas of communal and collective life publicly.
Not too long after Kavad (Qobad) Sassain started his reign, Mazdak who was a former Zoroastrian priest took his ideology to the Iranian people who were tired of the social class system in their homeland. Because Shah Kavad was a peaceful person who loved common people, he did not stop Mazdak. Therefore, the Mazdakite movement which advocates the sharing of properties and belief in the complete equality between people gained popularity. In spite of Marx, Mazdak believed in God and stressed that God created people equally at birth, therefore, people should stay equal throughout their lives and properties must be owned by society not individually. He believed that a human needs to be constantly taught and preached to stay away from sin. "We can not have a perfect human without the establishment of equality between them. If we want to have a human free of sin we should provide them equality and no discrimination at all. Otherwise, inequality produces unhappiness and sin." Mazdak said. The following sentence is from Mazdak which is repeated every day by socialists across the world: "There is an eternal war between the rich and poor and finally the poor will embrace victory, because it is a pre-requirement for peace and happiness which humans deserve". Mazdak, who was scholar who had studied in-depth Zoroastrianjism with thoroughly reading Avesta (law) and Zend (commentary), Buddhism, Manichaeism (Mani's ideology), Plato and Mithraism attracted a lot of attention and was supported by Kavad and two of his three sons; Zam and Kavoos, and caused a hardship for aristocrats. But they could not do anything that time because the Iranian army under three generals; Pirooz, Mehran and Nersi were at war witht he Roman Empire which they defeated the Romans in Amed, Tedozpolis (or Erzeroom) and marched toward Antioch. In 497AD, when Mazdak abolished the marriage law and Kavad did not stop him, the Zoroastrian Mo'bbeds (clergies) condemned Kavad to be deposed and sent him to "Forgetness Castle" in Khuzestan. He was freed shortly by a young mounted colonel named Siavash and took his throne back. However, this time he destroyed Mazakite and Mazdak at the hand of his third son, Nushiravan (Anushervan or Anushakravan) in 524AD. Many elements of Marxism were drawn from earlier economic and historical thoughts including Hegel, St. Simon, Ricardo, Fourier, Sismondi...and all of them derived some words from Mazdak especially the "class struggle", and the last person was Guss Hall, the leader of the U.S. communist party which in his book has mentioned that the first founder of communism was the Iranian Mazdak. He defended Mazdak and said "Do not forget that history is written by those who have conquered., so there is some bias". Guss died in September of 2000. |
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