Iran may be a sort of test case of Ellen Wood's Empire of Capital and the article "Endless War" she published in Historical Materialism. Modern imperialism can't exert direct control over all the areas in which it operates, but capital _always_ requires a nation state. Hence capital in the core capitalist states has to depend on states not under direct imperial control to discipline their population to the needs of imperial capital. This requires "endless war" to keep reminding the various semi-autonomous states of their duty!
>From Yoshie's posts on Iran I would gather (re stacking contradictions in the right order) that the principal contradiction in Iran today is that between neo-liberalism and illiberal nationalism. And, she argues, the latter _may_ show some signs of becoming less illiberal, at least if it triumphs over neoliberalism. And the principal aspect of that contradiction is Neoliberalism, since the Mullahs who have final say tend toward that position, and the president doesn't yet have the strength to overcome them. Iran, like any state, is a _process_, not static metaphysical entity, and it can't be understood by piling up randomly collected empirical data and generalizing from it, which is the procedure, ahistorical and anti-dialectical, Doug and Lou are following in their attacks on Yoshie. Now implicit, I think, in all Yoshie's Iran posts has been the premise that the principal contradiction in the world today is between U.S. imperialism and the rest of the world; moreover, so far it is the U.S. aspect that is dominant. U.S. leftists must somehow work towards reversing the u.s. dominance of that contradiction, and only then will _domestic_ contradictions 'ripen' enough for us to seriously exploit them. It is in that context, in reference to u.s. imperialism that "the enemy of my enemy is my ally"! (This is subject to challenge in specific cases, but the burden of proof is on those who raise such challenges, and given the immense threat that u.s. imperialism represents to all humanity, the burden is a heavy one.) That u.s. dominance internationally is reflected internally in innumerable ways. It shows in the passivity of the u.s. working class (80+% of the population, more to be described as a giant in a coma than a sleeping giant), in the dominance of the DP, and in the dominance among leftists of those who want to look to "nuances" in the field of international relations, judging each u.s. act separately. (The outrageous support from the left of the Serbian and Afghanistan aggressions are notable examples of the last point.) Hence my hypothesis that the drift to the right in the u.s. won't stop until its world hegemony is at least given a good shake. I don't think Iran is going to drift or be forced, in the near future, into the neoliberal orbit. The imperialist problems in Iraq, in Afghanistan, & in Latin America are a drag on u.s. power: not enough of a drag actually to weaken it but enough of a drag that it can't expand its power right now. And that same tendency (weakness) affects events within Iran: the neoliberals there can't open their nation entirely to a power that is in such hot water. (This balance of forces in Iran is what Yoshie has been trying to explore.) It is fairly obvious now that the Iraqi people were far better off under the rule of Hussein than they are now, and the semi-hysterical attacks on Yoshie over Iran in the last several months remind me of the equally hysterical insistence three years ago that we could not oppose the u.s. invasion of Iraq without first (like a Roman politician in Shakespeare showing his wounds to the mob) demonstrating through loud condemnations of Saddam the purity of our motives. It seems to me that whatever discored there may be within u.s. ruling circles over the details of the Iraq operation, that class remains solid in its determination to establish and maintain u.s. imperial hegemony in the mideast and in southern asia. Iran (pending a full awakening of the Chinese & Russians to the u.s. peril) is perhaps the major barrier the u.s. is encountering there. An Iran hostile to the u.s. (regardless of anything else) is an ally of the american people. Carrol
