Yoshie:
It seems to me you are obsessed with proving your antipathy to Iran,
an obsession that I do not share and consider tedious.
I don't have antipathy to countries. I am interested, however, in governments.
Have I mentioned that Venezuela ranks 75th, also below Albania?
<http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_VEN.html> I suppose
Albania has done better than the media let on. :->
Actually, all of these countries--including Venezuela--pale in comparison
to Cuba on the basis of the relationship between GDP and human development
indicators. Anyhow, I have no idea why you would rub the Venezuela
government's failings in my face since I am not Walter Lippmann. My purpose
on the Internet is not to provide free public relations for Third World
governments, especially those run by the bazaari bourgeoisie and
women-hating clerics who took power over the dead bodies of the Iranian left.
And? Is there any social force in Iran that can raise GDP/HDI in Iran
to the Cuban level tomorrow?
Absolutely. The working class is finally beginning to assert itself after
30 years of forced prayer meetings, the Ayatollah Khomeini cult, beatings
by the revolutionary guards, and reactionary labor laws. Sooner or later,
they will confront the bazaari bourgeoisie, the mullahs and the cops and
army. For information on how this working class movement is taking shape, I
would hope that everybody tune into Doug's interview with Val Moghadam in a
few weeks. This is how she sized up the Tudeh (Commuist) Party in Iran and
Fedaii Majority, whose opportunist line was identical to that put forward
by Yoshie today:
---
And what of the Tudeh Party and FedaiiMajority? From the beginning the
Tudeh had tried to entrench itself within the new political elite,
propagating the theory of the non-capitalist path of development and the
role of the petty bourgeoisie in the national democratic revolution. Almost
single-handedly, the Tudeh Party was responsible for the spread of the
notions of a progressive clergy and revolutionary Islam; the prophets
were dutifully invoked and sprinkled throughout Tudeh documents. The
Partys main theoretician, the well-known writer Ehsan Tabari, wrote
extensively on the subject and probably authored a widely circulated
booklet The Progressive Clergy and Us. A brief quotation will suffice to
give an idea of its argument: The programme of social development posed by
scientific socialism has some affinities with social demands and principles
of Islam and Shiism . . . and this fact makes cooperation between
supporters of socialism and the progressive clergy and its supporters not
only possible but imperative.
World Marxist Review carried an article by Tabari in 1982 (after the
repression of the militant Left had been launched!) entitled The Role of
Religion in Our Revolution. Here he claims that Islam is the ideology of
the antiimperialist revolution and sings the praises of Imam Khomeini
while attacking liberals such as Bazargan and National Front members. He
refers to anti-communism and fascist-type groups in Islamic guise
(hezbollahi) but does not link these to the Islamic state. He further draws
a distinction between revolutionary Islam and traditional Islam, and
dissociates the Party from extreme leftist groupings who are opposed to
Islam and the Islamic Republic; unlike them, our Party supports the
Revolution. It must be said that, whatever its mistakes, the militant Left
did at least make a political distinction between the Iranian Revolution
and the Islamic regime; whereas the Tudeh Party proceeded to enact a new
version of la trahison des clercs.
On at least one occasion Ehsan Tabari engaged the progressive clergy in a
televised philosophical debate. Here he noted that the Islamic
preoccupation with the problem of free will and determination was similar
to the Marxist concern with social/human agency and lawfulness. He also
sought to defend historical and dialectical materialism by finding
parallels in Islamic philosophical and political thought.32 However, while
Tudeh literature advocated a MarxistMuslim dialogue and waxed eloquent on
the virtues of Islam and the Shiite clergy, the Islamic ideologues
themselves never wavered in their denunciation of materialism, secularism,
Marxism and communism.
In another article published in World Marxist Review in 1983, the Tudeh
secretary of the time, Kianuri, motivated the Partys political stance by
referring to the sustained struggle proceeding on four main fronts: (1)
against external plots, the political, economic and military pressure of
world imperialism headed by the USA, and regional reaction; (2) against the
intrigues of domestic counter-revolutionaries, who wanted to stage a coup,
and against political terrorism; (3) against the economic terrorism of
the big capitalists and landowners and for social justice; and (4) for
guaranteed civil rights and freedoms. The priorities are interesting, as is
the deflection of criticism away from the regime to external contradictions
and the role of US imperialism. Elsewhere in the article Washington is
branded as the main initiator of the IranianIraqi war. Kianuri also
denounces the conspiracy and plot that Bani-Sadr had supposedly attempted,
and lambasts the divisive activity of leftists, Maoist-type extremists
and their like. No reference is made to the numerous communists,
socialists and other dissidents who were then being persecuted, jailed,
tortured or killed by the regime. The only complaint concerns harassment of
the Tudeh Party itself, and of its associate, the FedaiiMajority.
Mindful of the 1983 crackdown on the Party and the arrest of its entire
leadership, one can only shake ones head in bewilderment that such an
experienced and established party could have been so wrong. Truly these
were the graduated lackies of clericalism that Lenin had criticized
whatever sympathy one might have for Tudeh members in prison. As for the
charge that the Party was simply following the line and analysis of its
comrades to the north, Shahrough Akhavis study of Russian language
writings on the Iranian Revolution, the clergy and the Islamic Republic
conclusively shows that Soviet perspectives were more varied, more
sophisticated, and more critical of the mullahs and theocracy than the
Tudeh theoreticians ever were. Only now does the Partywhat remains of
itand its new leadership concede that it was at best naive and at worst
misled by leaders such as Kianuri. Let us hope that the lessons will be
learnt by other Communist parties, especially in the Middle East and parts
of Africa, which have displayed a tendency to compromise democratic and
socialist principles and to subordinate themselves to nationalist and
anti-imperialist movements and regimes.
