Strangling North Dakota with no mercy
The National Endowment for Democracy
Pakistan general: US interfering in Iran affairs
Now those aren't two of the more trustworthy sites to be relying on when one is invested in an argument (something I try not to be these days). But I think the story of Karl-Heinz Kurras has some relevance. If the Iranian people want it, they can have it.
Yo Graeme,
I like that you're taking up the issue of class with what is going on in Iran right now. What I guess I don't agree with, or maybe just have more fear than optimism than you do, is regards what the practical outcome is going to be. The fact that many tens of thousands of mostly young people (most of Iran's population is very young) are fighting the police in the streets for weeks on end points to social problems and not election results being the cause - if you had a job to go to in the morning would you fight the power or go to work? If you're unemployed you don't face that problem. But the reformers in Iran are mostly pro-neoliberal, meaning that they have no problem with a repressive police state (hey already got that) but would dismantle a lot of the social programs currently upheld by the Iranian government. Now having welfare is hardly socialist, but it is contrary to neoliberalism. I just see this whole thing having the potential to turn into one of these "velvet" or "orange" "revolutions" that may give a few more political freedoms (or not) but really just rapes workers overall.
While there may not be a unified ideological component, the struggle itself will radicalize many who were just out for liberal or market reforms.
Hey Adam.
There is a myth that running around the left community that Ahmadinejad is somehow for the poor. In fact, he has been at the helm of the largest privatizations since the late eighties (ironically, Mousavi was apparently calling for more state control then). This is from 2006, in a UK left-leaning magazine called "Variant":
Despite populist promises, such as the fair distribution of the oil income, the current Iranian president [Ahmadinejad] has presided over one of the most pro-capitalist governments Iran has seen since the launch of the era of ‘reconstruction’ in 1988, when Iran first accepted IMF loans. Every spring the IMF sends a commission to Tehran to verify the country’s compliance with global capital’s requirements and every year by mid-summer the Central Bank and the government propose further privatisation in the industrial, banking and service sectors – bringing further misery to tens of thousands of workers, the victims of the subsequent job losses and casualisation. However, the level and scope of privatisation approved this July was so serious that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had to ‘re-interpret’ Article 4 of the Islamic republic’s constitution. The government’s plans to sell off 80% of its stake in a range of state-run industrial companies in the banking, media, transportation and mineral sectors were so far-reaching they amounted to a reversal of one of its own economic ‘principles’ as declared in the Iranian constitution.
http:// www.variant.randomstate.o...adinejad27.html
Even if Ahmadinejad era wasn't privatizing the shit out of Iran, the right-wing populism that comes out of his mouth is closer to fascism than socialism. The reformers can't solve Iran's economic woes, it wouldn't take people long to figure this out. We forget Iran had active worker councils before the Mullahs stole the revolution in '79.
I think the fake left is afraid to seriously study Iran. They don't want to spoil theor simpleton worldview.
I think the working class in Iran has too much of an historical memory of struggle - not to mention contemporary struggles - for the revolt to become a "Velvet Revolution."
I am sure that the Western ruling classes are aware of this, and the last thing they want is a real revolt in Iran. Furthermore, they need the Mullahs in power as scary puppets.
The important thing is that whether it is a revolution, a protest against a perhaps stolen election, a secular protest vs. religious rulership, or a class disturbance, it is Iran's, not ours. (You can't even get u.s. citz out in the streets to protest their houses being taken away or their jobs, even.)
It's also important to keep firmly in mind that digital social networks can report political movements, and describe then, but they never MAKE them. (See what's happened with single payer public health care in Obama's neo regime.)
Love, C.
(You can't even get u.s. citz out in the streets to protest their houses being taken away or their jobs, even.)
Consciousness always follows events.
I think the fake left is afraid to seriously study Iran. They don't want to spoil theor simpleton world view.
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Andrew
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