Embryonic Counter-Hegemony: Labor Assemblies and the Struggle for Worker Autonomy in Iran

Under conditions of authoritarian neoliberalism, associational space and institutional redress are structurally foreclosed, limiting the capacity of labor and social movements to become counter-hegemonic in the sense defined by existing literature. This presents a theoretical impasse when analyzing labor movements in contexts such as Iran. To address this, I develop a Gramscian framework introducing the concept of embryonic counter-hegemony: organizational efforts that enact counter-hegemonic logics and practices but remain fragile, structurally constrained, and temporally limited. This article examines two landmark cases of autonomous labor organizing in Iran: the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Company (HTSC) and the Iran National Steel Industrial Group (INSIG). In both cases, workers bypassed state-controlled institutions and formed alternative organizational structures—general assemblies—to contest privatization, demand democratic control over production, and resist state repression. While these formations did not consolidate into stable counter-hegemonic blocs, they embodied embryonic practices of democratic governance and oppositional consciousness. Drawing on four years of content analysis of Telegram posts, public interviews with worker organizers, and archival protest coverage, I show how these labor assemblies developed participatory procedures, resisted co-optation, and articulated alternative political imaginaries. By theorizing these formations as embryonic rather than failed or merely reactive, I reorient counter-hegemonic analysis toward the organizational practices and strategic contradictions of resistance under authoritarianism. This study contributes to Gramscian labor studies and critical organizational scholarship by illuminating how subaltern actors construct alternative organizations within repressive regimes—and what such efforts reveal about the possibilities and limits of organizing under constraint.