239 pages (including Illustrations, Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, Index)
London: I.B. Taurus, 1999
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Communist-Party/message/1229
From: Wintree Manor <wintreemanor at y...> Date: Sat Aug 11, 2001 2:55 pm Subject: [Communist-Party] The Free Thinker's Forensic Faith
The Saturday, August 4, 2001 edition of PWW (of the CPUSA, M.P.) contains a photo of Fidel Castro and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah, celebrating the Cuban Revolution together in Havanna. The apparent incongruity of a Marxist Revolutionary and an Islamic Fundamentalist celebrating together is reconciled at a level deeper than anti-Imperialism...
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0489/8904003.html
> ... The Left
The leftist organizations began going underground as early as 1980 and 1981 when the Islamic Republic decided that their activities would pose a major challenge to the existence of the regime. Since then, many leftist activists have been executed and many await trial in Khomeini's jails. As a result of harsh suppression by the regime, the ranks of the leftist organizations are depleted and their morale is extremely low.
Besides the suppression, the failure of the Iranian left can also be attributed to other factors. First, when the revolution began, the Iranian left consisted of small, secret, intellectual circles with no strong links to either the working class or the peasantry. Having become accustomed to life in underground teamhouses and having been trained politically in military confrontations with the shah's secret police, the left found itself faced with a completely new set of political conditions and ideological problems in 1978 and in 1979 after the revolution.
Leftist leaders, young and politically inexperienced, failed to utilize the relatively democratic conditions created by the revolutionary process in order to establish links with the working class, the urban poor, and the peasantry. Instead, leftist intellectual leaders expended their energies in sectarian infighting. Hence, no serious attempt was undertaken to create a united front to coordinate the actions of all leftist forces.
Second, the Khomeini regime used the so-called "hostage crisis" and the Iran-Iraq war to mobilize popular support, divert attention from real socioeconomic problems, and to crush the internal opposition. A section of the left disarmed itself voluntarily at the same time the regime was laying plans to destroy the opposition. With one section of the left supporting the regime, and another section opposing it, the rift within the left intensified. Hence, the leftist forces failed to defend themselves against the government's attacks.
The left in an era of division and transition ... At the very moment Khomeini began his greatest onslaught in ... intellectual models of the Iranian left could be grouped under "Soviet communism."
http://www.iran-bulletin.org/left_iran.html excerpt>Twenty years of rule by the Islamic Republic has deepened the long- standing structural crisis of the economy. The country, even by the measures of a peripheral country, is poverty-stricken. Class inequality has reached unbearable proportions. Official figures show that in 1996 the poorest tenth of the population possessed only 1.4% of the national income, while the richest tenth netted 39.8%, a ratio of over 28! The same source estimated that the bottom half took only 16.8% of the national income. Put another way, the top ten percent pocket twice as much as half the population [6]. Things have got worse since. Could the raison d?être of the left have disappeared in such a society? <snip> Collapse of Soviet Union
This was a global event with global repercussions. The shock wave in Iran was particularly ferocious. First, it opened wounds that the "Islamic revolution" had created and were still fresh. Second, the intellectual models of the Iranian left could be grouped under "Soviet communism". The "new left" in Iran had had a brief and passing bloom in the form of the armed struggle movement in the decade preceding the revolution. With the crushing of the Fadai? movement the new left had in practice withered. Unlike its neighbours, Iran had no significant social democratic movement. With the closure of the dossier of Soviet communism, the theoretical structure of almost the entire left currents in Iran fell apart. The most important grounds for this blow were as follows:
a. The blind alley of "soviet communism" showed that socialism without democracy, whatever its achievements, creates a climate from which people want to escape. Furthermore, in such a system before everything, and more than anything, these very socialist values become discredited. The desire for equality and solidarity pale. Individualism and greed attain the attraction of forbidden fruit and reach epidemic proportions. Lying and deception become the main weapon for survival.
We witnessed how all attempts to deepen democracy or "go beyond bourgeois democracy" is doomed to failure if individual freedoms - or more accurately - negative freedoms are trampled. It ends in an all-embracing despotism. Indeed the seeds for the defeat of Bolshevism were sown at the moment the leaders of the October revolution, in their efforts to defend the young workers state ignored the main nature of modern democracy.
Modern democracy, which historically took shape with the rise of capitalism, unlike older models is based on the principle of "individual autonomy". In the older versions the individual in its modern sense did not exist. While it is true that liberalism emphasises "individual autonomy" because it mistrusts democracy and fears that a broad social will would normally interfere with the rich. Yet supporters of socialism must not ignore the vital role of negative freedoms as complementary to, and a decisive factor for, positive freedoms [2].
b. With the final bankruptcy of the "communist" party-states it became clear that no party could consider itself the representative of the working class through the silence of that class. This remains true regardless of what the party stands for, or what services it has performed for the working class, or continues to do so for that class.
In the ideological moulds of "Soviet communism", the proletariat appeared in practice as an allegorical being, or at least a rational totality independent of the sum total of mortal workers. This semi-mythical entity was manifested in the "communist party".
This was a party that knew what route the historic march of the workers towards liberation had to take. Therefore the historic will of the working class could only be expressed through this party. And since one of the conditions for liberation is the unity of the working class against capital, only one "single" party could be the "historic party of the working class".
Of course, in order to fulfil its mission, this "single historic party of the working class" has to get the real mass of workers to support it: through persuasion before attaining political power and through ensuring their obedience after power. It was thus that the "historic representative" of the working class was transformed into the guardian of that class [3]. The discrediting of such thinking imposes major modification on the way the left views the working class, with enormous consequences.
First, the simple truth that workers as a "class" can only be meaningful through the active participation of the entire work force and not through their silence or absence.
Second, the more the actual the presence of workers, the more the myth of their unanimity and rock-like unity loses its sheen. It is now evident that the class solidarity and unity of the working class is not achievable by melting down the various differences, and even some dissension, among workers but only in parallel to these differences and dissensions. The working "class", like the "people" are understood by the totality of their individuals and groups. Normally these do not forget their special identities and particular interests.
Third, the class solidarity of workers is not negated by a plurality political parties, labour organisations and associations. Indeed, under certain conditions, the organisational plurality of workers might give elbowroom to the varied tendencies in the labour movement and better ensure the class solidarity of workers against capital. It might even help reduce the risk of bureaucratisation of labour organisations - an affliction which turns labour representatives into their bosses.
Fourth, with the epoch of thought-freeze finally over, it is difficult to be blind to the fact that any concept of the "historic" route the working class has to pass to reach its liberation can only be taken seriously if carried out at the level of a scientific examination. And scientific predictions can only be conditional, and have little in common with prophet-like prophesies. Moreover, something that is scientifically obvious is not always politically obvious. No political current has the right to claim special rights as the bearer of the "historic" consciousness or the interpreter of the "historic" will of the proletariat. Now, even though gradually, everyone will be forced to humbly admit that "everything is known by everyone, and everyone has not been born yet".
c. "Soviet communism" relied on a very crude and simplistic understanding of ownership relations. It always valued public over private ownership, whatever the circumstances. Furthermore, it saw public ownership predominantly, and even occasionally exclusively, in the form of state ownership. Almost under every circumstance the plan was considered better than the market. A planned and state controlled economy was inherently a socialist attribute and therefore a measure of progress.
But experience showed that economies that were built on these premises neither brought material welfare, nor guaranteed the steady growth of labour productivity. They could neither satisfy consumers? needs, nor encourage the creativity of the producer. Finally, by concentrating all the potentialities of production and distribution in one powerful state-run planning centre, they inevitably end up in a ubiquitous despotism. The totalitarianism that the "Soviet communism" produced was not only because it ignored political freedoms. Its grasp of socialist economy could not avoid ending up in the absolutism of the state.
The discrediting of the Soviet model of communism gave impetus to a rolling debate on socialist economy. While a clear conclusion has yet to be reached, significant unanimity over some important issues have appeared. Most self-identified supporters of socialism agree that the complete statization and planning, and even more, its control by a single centre is not essential for socialism. Indeed, it is contrary to some of the most fundamental socialist values - such as participatory democracy, popular self management, mass control of political power etc. There are many currents who believe that the socialisation of ownership does not necessarily require total negation of the market. Some see economic autarky as a calamity which breeds nationalism, regionalism, statism and even obscurantism. While the Iranian left has yet to address these issues, they will undoubtedly receive its global echo in time.
The generation break on the left <snip> http://www.geocities.com/pract_history/redmenace/iran.html
Rafsanjani is painfully aware of the tasks facing the Islamic Republic. The priorities of the Iranian bourgeoisie are to complete the process of the primitive accumulation of wealth and transform the basis of the economy from extensive development (and the extraction of absolute surplus value from the proletariat) to intensive development (and the extraction of relative surplus value). To this effect a set of measures have been proposed: the privatisation of nationalised industries; the selling of foreign currency by the government inside Iran; the import of advanced technology; and the easing of customs restrictions...
Needless to say Leninism has always compromised with religion. For example, in 1920 the Comintern organised a "Congress of peoples of the East" in Baku, Azerbaijan. Muslim beliefs and institutions were treated with respect and muslim participants were bribed into joining the Bolsheviks in order to fight English Imperialism. Some of the speeches were written by communists such as the American John Reed who called for the intensification of the class struggle. Comintern translators, however, under direct instruction from Lenin and Zinoviev, translated "class war" as "holy jihad"! Khomeini was thus not the first person to call for a "holy jihad" in the 20th century.The Comintern beat him to it!
Iranian ‘revolutionaries’ have always been terrified of Islam, awe-struck by the Koran and respectful towards Profit Mohammad. Yet Islam, like all religions, Iegitimises the status quo and upholds capitalist exploitation. The Koran is an archaic work of superstition which advocates slavery and promises "virgins in paradise" to the faithful! As for Profit Mohammad, he was a rapist and a child molester (A-ye-she, Mohammad’s second wife, was only six years old when she was first raped by him)! Anyone who believes in Allah and archangels deserves to be offended! Muslims and christians have been threatening non-believers with the fires of damnation forcenturies. The supercession of religion is as pressing as ever.
Religion manipulates people’s insecurity and yearning for community by organising social life around a false community composed of rituals and hierarchy. Islam is shit! It is high time we pulled the chain and flushed it down the toilet
LENINISM OR COMMUNISM?
We exist in a capitalist world based on the exploitation of the proletariat through a global system of commodity production and exchange. We are for the destruction of the money/wages system and its replacement by a classless human community where alienation, the subjugation of women and nationalism have been abolished forever.
Communism is a social movement-a product of class struggle. It has nothing to do with various schemes fo rthe nationalisation of the means of production put forward by Leninists. Our struggle is in complete antagonism to all forms of mediation and institutionalization (eg. trade-unions, democracy, representation). Only autonomous activity by the whole proletariat can break the back of world capitalism.
Leninists with their admiration for ‘Taylorism’, the ‘militarisation of labour’, ‘vanguard’ fetishism, and their elitist hierarchical conceptions of middle class ‘professional revolutionaries’, not to mention their nauseating apologies for every instance of "betrayal" ranging from Kronstadt (1921) to the ‘Islamic revolution’, belong to the dustbin of history. The proletariat will conquer them!
Down with capitalism! Down with Bolshevism! Down with all religions! Down with fascism, democracy and all states! Down with trade-unions and parliaments!
For the proletarian revolution and the abolition of wage slavery! Long live COMMUNISM!
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