Reflections on
Posted to www.marxmail.org on July 21, 2006
In an MRZine attack (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/pourzal190706.html) on Akbar Ganji, a prominent Iranian dissident aligned with American imperialism, Rostam Pourzal writes that "like the ultra-right former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her guru Friedrich von Hayek, Ganji extols Karl Popper's elitist philosophy of freedom throughout his writings…"
In a Logos Journal interview with jailed Iranian dissident Ramin Jahanbegloo conducted by Danny Postel, the Popper connection pops up again:
Danny Postel: You’ve talked about
a “renaissance of liberalism” taking place in
Ramin Jahanbegloo: Thanks to the recent discovery and translations of the schools of liberal thought dominant in the Anglo-American world, as found in the works of Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls and Karl Popper, and an appreciation of older traditions of liberalism (Kantian, Millian or Lockean), a new trend of liberalism has taken shape among the younger generation of Iranian intellectuals. Iranian liberals today do not deny that the liberties appropriate to a liberal society can be derived from a theory or stated in a system of principles, but their view of a liberal society is related to a view of humanity and truth as inherently unfinished, incomplete, and self-transforming. The principles of Iranian liberalism cannot be grounded in religious truth, because the very idea of free agency, as it is understood today by Iranian liberals, goes against any form of determinism (religious or historical).
Full: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.2/jahanbegloo_interview.htm
For those who have been keeping an eye on "civil society" type interventions in countries whose development model does not pass muster with the U.S. State Department, the positive references to Karl Popper might be expected. George Soros's Open Society, which habitually meddles in the internal affairs of such countries on four continents, operates on Popperian principles.
Danny Postel is a professional
propagandist operating in the liberal imperialist thinktank/foundation
world, largely under the auspices of www.opendemocracy.net,
a well-funded website that is a focal point for defenders of all these
"revolutions" that keep cropping in places like
Lately
A couple of months ago, the cause célèbre were the bus
drivers of
We are also aware of Doug Ireland's nonstop crusade around
gay rights in
The most recent incident in
The articles on MRZine have generated a lot of controversy. A frequent commenter on my blog named Poulod, an Iranian-American high school student, asked me to forward this to Marxmail a while ago:
"I'm not a Marxmail subscriber, but could you somehow
convey this to the list? I'm a little sickened by the stuff Yoshie
and others have been spouting about Ahmadinejad and 'liberation theology' the
past few weeks. I don't have time to put together a detailed response, but as
an Iranian-American leftist and the child, friend and relative of a number of
Iranian leftists, can I just emphatically say: Ahmadinejad is NOT '
In some ways, the debate over how to assess Ahmadinejad
reminds me of those I have had over figures such as Robert Mugabe or some
Eastern European politicians who have been dragging their feet on
privatization. As a rule of thumb, I don't automatically put a plus where the
U.S. State Department puts a minus. I spent considerable time and effort
researching the history of
Understanding the Iranian revolution has been a real
challenge for Marxists, including those in
For a useful introduction to these issues, I strongly
recommend Val Moghadem's "One Revolution or Two?
The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic" that appeared in the 1989
Socialist Register (http://socialistregister.com/socialistregister.com/files/SR_1989_Moghadem.pdf).
She is a former professor of sociology and director of women's studies at
As the title of her article implies, the Iranian revolution
combined clerical and secular components. Rather than trying to dismiss the
clerical elements as some kind of illegitimate intrusion, Moghadam
makes the case for their genuine but uneven radicalism. She also makes the case
that at a certain point, the clerics destroyed the revolutionary fiber that was
present at the outset and turned
In her analysis of the class forces of the 1979 revolution,
she points out that the ruling class that backed the Shah was effectively
overthrown, and that a middle layer of 'bazaaris' and
small-scale industrialists replaced it acting in an alliance with the Shi'ite clergy. Although resentment toward imperialist
domination gave this layer an affinity with anti-imperialist politics, it also
held
Despite the temptation to look at the Iranian clerics in 1979 as a monolithic bloc, Moghadem identifies four different currents:
1. the 'radical Islam' of the young intelligentsia
2. Kohmaeini's 'militant Islam'
3. the 'liberal Islam' of Bazargan
4. the 'traditionalist Islam' of the ulama.
Not only were there divisions within the Shi'ites, the left was divided as well. There were two guerrilla groups, the Fedayeen and the Mojahedin. There was also Tudeh, the Communist Party that had been ousted in a CIA coup in 1953, and Paykar, a dogmatic split from the Mohahedin with as pronounced a hostility to the clerics as the Workers Communist Party. As should be obvious, the divisions on the left were exploited by the Shi'ites who picked them off one by one.
The Fedayeen were conciliatory to
Khomeini and even displayed his portrait at their meetings. When the government
demanded that they disarm, they declined to do so, saying that it was necessary
to defend the revolution with gun in hand. They also were critical of the 'pasdaran,' or revolutionary guards that included the young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The revolutionary guards proved adept
at breaking up leftist meetings that were organized to protest attempts to
create a new constitution for
Since the organized left had a strong presence on Iranian campuses, the government took the extraordinary measure of closing the universities for 9 months in 1980-1981. Led by the Mojahedin, who combined radical politics with Moslem piety and who supported the 'moderate' president Bani-Sadr, the left clashed with the pro-government revolutionary guard repeatedly. The uncritical support for Bani-Sadr was symptomatic of a certain myopic opportunism on the part of the Iranian left which could never effectively differentiate its enemies from its friends:
Iranian President Abol Bani-Sadr Tuesday declared a
victory for government attempts to rid the campus of
Spearheaded by
fundamentalist student groups, Bani-Sadr's Moslem
clerical rivals had made
Revolutionary Guards
and Moslem fundamentalist students succeeded during the night in ousting the
last remaining leftists from
In aligning himself and his government with the Islamic drive, Bani-Sadr appeared to be trying to take the issue away from his clerical rivals within the Revolutionary Council.
In the initial years of the revolution, despite such repression, much of the left--with the exception of Paykar--was still willing to cut the clerics some slack. Using formulations drawn from Kautskyism, the Tudeh hailed a 'democratic revolution'. For the Fedayeen, it was a "national, anti-imperialist" revolution. The left was torn between standing with the government against imperialism and pushing its own class demands. This contradiction was deepened when the clerics appeared to act resolutely, as was the case with the seizure of the American Embassy. It was of course possible that such a gesture was intended to burnish the government's reputation than to really break with imperialism, as the arms deal with Reagan would serve to counter-indicate.
I must say that my initial reaction to the MRZine articles was a bit on the cool side if for no other
reason that I was deeply involved in defending a far more deep-going revolution
in
Whatever the foreign policy vagaries of the Islamic Republic and its repression of the left within its borders, there is no doubt about its willingness to attack class inequality. Moghadem points out:
"Two crucial institutions created to alter economic relations and effect social justice were the Housing Foundation (created to provide housing for the poor, particularly in urban areas) and the Reconstruction Crusade (established to provide rural areas with electricity, water, feeder roads, schools, health clinics, housing, and other social and infrastructural services). Legislation was passed to reduce the gap among wage rates as a result of which the workers' wages were raised by 60 percent. A policy of price support in the form of subsidies for basic needs items were instituted to protect the poorer groups from the rampant inflation that had followed the economic decline during the revolution. Modifications were proposed in the tax system to make it more progressive and prevent excessive concentration of wealth. Nationalization of major industries, banks, insurance companies, and foreign trade were meant to weaken further possibilities of emerging large-scale private accumulation."
With all of Ahmadinejad's flaws, there can be no doubt that he is trying to keep these traditions alive. Against elements of the 'bazaari' and the clergy that adapt to it, he seeks to promote the interests of and gain the allegiance of the workers and the peasants who have become fed up in recent years with growing class distinctions. (For a film representation of these divisions, I strongly recommend Jafar Panahi's "Crimson Gold" that I reviewed here: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/CrimsonGold.htm).
However, in conclusion, we should never lose sight of the fact that our goals are different. I'll let the ever-eloquent Val Moghadem have the last word on that:
http://iranreview.com/Iran%20Analysis/on_the_recent_elections_in_iran_.htm
On the Recent
Elections in
Val Moghadam
Iranian elections can
be full of surprises - or can they? Was the election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad unpredictable or part of a pattern?
Mohammad Khatami's landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 were won on
a reformist campaign, and his presidency -- along with
a majority reformist parliament -- raised expectations of social transformation
and political change. But when the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Council of Guardians blocked reform, the
movement lost its momentum and citizens became disillusioned or angry.
Municipal elections brought in a conservative majority, as did the February
2004 parliamentary elections. In the run-up to the recent presidential
elections, the reformists' choice had been Mostafa Moin, but he did not receive enough votes in the first
round. After that, everyone was sure that former president and "pragmatic
conservative" Hashemi Rafsanjani would win.
Indeed, many reformists decided to back Rafsanjani, leading to spirited debates
among liberals and reformists in Iran and in the diaspora
as to whether this was the correct tactic or not. But instead of a victory on
the part of the rich and well-connected Rafsanjani with a daughter widely known
as a feminist (former parliamentarian Faezeh Hashemi), it was Ahmadinejad who won in the run-off.
Voter turn-out was
lower than in the past, and many citizens boycotted the elections altogether.
Boycotting elections is one way that Iranian citizens show their lack of
confidence in the system - and the Nobel laureate Shirin
Ebadi announced that she too was joining the boycott.
Perhaps close to 40% of eligible voters did not cast their ballots in the
recent elections. The feeling for many is that as long as the Council of
Guardians remains on the scene to vet candidates, the whole process is
compromised, and "Islamic democracy" Iranian-style is either a
pipe-dream or a highly managed form of democracy. In the run-off, the choice
between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad seemed for many to be far too limited (rather
like the choice between a Republican and a Democrat in the
This underscores the
main deficit in the reform movement: in classic liberal fashion, the emphasis
has been placed on civil and political liberties while socio-economic
conditions and rights have been marginalized. As important as it is to argue
for removal of social restrictions on dress and recreation, these issues may be
most pertinent to the well-off in northern
In the past, women and
youth were Khatami's main constituents and indeed the
major social base of the reform movement. They are now the main losers.
Marxists understand
class conflict well (and some of the liberal reformists would have done well to
draw on the insights of their past Marxism), but even so, cross-class alliances
are possible and desirable, as well as very much part of Iran's collective
action repertoire. If