Gilbert Achcar interviewed by Andrew Kennedy for the Socialist Outlook
[...]
Q: Some on the British Left would probably like to entertain the idea that Hizbollah is capable of evolving leftwards. Is that a fantasy?
Achcar: Basically, yes. Even a plebeian group like Muqtada al Sadr’s organisation in Iraq is more socially threatening to the bourgeoisie than Hizbollah. The latter, of course, is radical in its opposition to Israel, as is usual with Islamic fundamentalist forces linked to Iran, but in Lebanese politics Hizbollah is integrated fully into the system. It has two ministers in the government that is dominated by Hariri-led US clients and it allies itself with quite reactionary figures. True, it organises social services, but only as churches or charities do—they represent no social threat whatsoever to the bourgeois social order. There is not even a potential for that, given Hizbollah’s ideology, its structure, its close links to Iran and to Syria. Iran, Hizbollah’s model of society and state, is utterly bourgeois in its social structure. Whatever populist ranting Ahmadinejad (the Iranian president) may have given vent to, last year, in his electoral battle for the presidency against the capitalist Rafsanjani, these do not translate into any kind of concrete social measures. In that respect, Chavez’s Venezuela is a far more progressive state: Iran is not a Muslim equivalent of Venezuela. Such equivalents existed in the Middle East in the 60s, but it is out of their defeat that Islamic fundamentalism was able to grow.
[...]
The whole interview was crossposted here:
http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=485&Itemid=1