[lbo-talk] Postel responds to Leninology

[Sean Andrews]

The problem with Postel is that he is just as concerned with making
the case for Leftists (as well as any theory that can be seen from
what he calls "the left") being morally bankrupt in every way as he is
in saying that this is an issue that these Leftists shoudl be
championing.  I read his little pamphlet last month (on Pug's
recommendation) and, while I found it enlightening, I thought it
really tiresome that he had to try so hard to badmouth "Leftists."
Only poor little Danny Postel, who is a liberal, no really he's really
a liberal--no please don't accuse him of being anything else because
he's come to his senses and is a straight as an arrow liberal. He's
almost as bad as David Horowitz on this.  The next thing you know, his
sanctimonious diatribes will be accompanied by his asking for money to
support his special center that specializes in

1. bringing freedom to Iranian dissidents and
2. castrating those heartless Leftists who forgot about them.

None of this is to say that he doesn't have interesting information to
give, but that he is so committed to proving that

1. Leftists aren't paying attention to Iran, which is a major human
rights/liberty/freedom situation
2. Iranian Dissidents really want "intellectuals in the West" to support them
2a. (but only *some* intellectuals, because the Iranian intellectuals
are, and this is something he bangs you over the head with throughout
the pamphlet, LIBERAL not LEFTIST.
so
3. If you want to support Iran, you really have to agree with Postel's
political ideology.  this is obvious because of all the above points.

though he acts like 2 is his point, it is really 3 that is his main
point.  It's much better for his career.

Take the interview that McLemee mentions in the article, it's available here:

http://www.logosjournal.com:80/issue_5.2/jahanbegloo_interview.htm

In this interview, with this wide ranging philosopher and very
impressive intellectual, Postel allows him to give us an overview of
Iranian intellectual culture at the moment--and indeed it is a very
interesting development.  But as the interview progresses, it becomes
patently clear that, excited as he may be about Jahanbegloo's account,
he really want to be able to narrowly characterize the intellectual
movement in Iran as strictly liberal and categorically non-Marxist or
non-Leninist.  His questions are clearly focused on making this point:

Q4: Why, in your view, are Iranian intellectuals and students
generally not attracted to Marxist thinkers and ideas? Why do you
think they tend not to be engaged by political currents like the
anti-globalization movement or anti-imperialism?

[This is basically the 'tell me I'm right about the intellectual
bankruptcy of "Leftism" in general.'  It is hoping for a pat answer
that will apply to all contexts.  RJ, an actually rigorous
intellectual, points out the political problems with Marxism in the
context of Iran as he understands it (the relationship of leftists
with the revolutionary movement that eventually, IIRC he fails to
mention, ends up murdering a good number of them.)]

Q5: You referred to Marxism's intellectual influence in Iran. What
exactly has been the extent of that influence?

[here RJ explains some of the problems--the main one being that few
Marxists in Iran had read Marx.   there is some interesting historical
info here about the intellectual development he is part of]

Q7: You mentioned a number of contemporary European thinkers in whom
there is interest among some young Iranians today: Derrida, Foucault,
Agamben, Badiou, Žižek. Does Antonio Negri also belong in this group?
I know that you brought him to lecture in Iran last year — which I
found interesting, given your views on Marxism. Writing about Negri's
reception in Iran, Nina Power, who was there, commented that his ideas
were generally regarded as "oddly tangential to [Iran's] most pressing
concerns." Negri's "concept of radicalism," she noted, appeared to
possess "no frontal relation to the constraints of the existing order"
in Iran. If anything, she observed, Negri's message appealed more to
the religious hard right. "If there is to be a new Iranian revolution
from below," she concluded, "it is unlikely to take the form of a
plebeian carnival or quasi-Biblical 'exodus'." This sounds entirely
consonant with your own thoughts on the failure of Marxism in Iran.
Isn't it?

[this is, again, attempting to reel RJ back--Isn't Negri Marxist?--it is also a

Q8: Is there interest in Noam Chomsky and Edward Said in Iran today?
As someone who has interviewed Chomsky more than once, do you sense
that his political outlook speaks to the contemporary Iranian
situation? When you brought Fred Dallmayr to Tehran, he lectured on
Said. What sort of response did he get from his Iranian interlocutors?
Do the perspectives of Chomsky and Said — so paradigmatic in Western
academia today — resonate in the Iranian context you have described?

[Not sure in which quarters of Western academia Chomsky and Said are
paradigmatic in, but none of this precision is necessary fo DP's
dismissal of every thinker but the ones he agrees with.  RJ says many
good things about Said (who Postel villifies early in his book) and
this really doesn't sit well w/ Postel.  So he tries to get RJ to make
a distinction between the political work these guys do with the
content of their ideas.  In other words, "Help me get this straight
here: you can get behind people who give their support to your cause,
even if they spout off the bankrupt ideas I don't hold."]

Q9: You have expressed a deep respect that you and other Iranians feel
for Chomsky and Said in broad terms, as intellectuals. But I want to
focus for a moment on the political content of their ideas. Let me
rephrase my question this way. You've painted a picture of a liberal
renaissance in Iran today, of an intellectual landscape in which
liberal thinkers and ideas, generally speaking, hold more sway than do
radical/Marxist ones; a milieu in which the language of democracy,
rights, and pluralism has a deeper resonance than does the language of
anti-imperialism, anti-globalization, and anti-capitalism. Although
you're certainly right to emphasize the universalism and humanism of
both Chomsky and Said, there's no avoiding the fact that the central
issue around which their political writings revolve is that of
imperialism. Anti-imperialism is not the animating spirit or the
central issue for Iranian liberals, whereas anti-imperialist and Third
Worldist motifs formed the core of the Iranian Marxist paradigm, which
— as you pointed out earlier — was a failed project that the younger
generation of Iranian intellectuals largely rejects. Given this, it
would seem to me that Chomsky and Said, as paradigmatic figures of
anti-imperialist thought, would have less direct political relevance
in the context of the Iranian liberalism. Is there not something of a
tension or disjuncture here, between the liberal-democratic-pluralist
project and the radical anti-imperialist one?

[RJ responds by saying that these two thinkers are very important,
even if they are associated with (Postel's cartoon version of) the
"Left" and that, in addition, the anti-imperialist question is at
least as important (if not more so) than the liberal one.  This is
obviously not the answer that Postel was looking for so he tries to
pin RJ down a bit more to the absolutely liberal tack he's trying to
spin...]

Q10: Although you, Ramin, value and derive insight from the work of
both liberal-pluralist thinkers like Berlin and radical
anti-imperialist thinkers like Said and Chomsky, are Said and Chomsky
as popular among Iranians today — young Iranians in particular — as
are Berlin and Habermas?

[in other words, "you sound like you might have a taint of Marx on
'ya.  Isn't it true that the kids these days have gotten over that."
Said and Chomsky, at earlier points in the book, have been roundly
dismissed by Postel (on p. 13 he even accuses people who use Said's
ideas of being Orientalist themselves saying "anti-Orientalism can be
a form of Orientalism." In this case it is Amy Goodman that has failed
to be as pure a supporter as Postel for the Iranian cause.)  Chomsky
gets points in the book, but he's really the only specific
intellectual Postel engages with on "the Left."  Everyone else is just
a morally bankrupt anti-imperialist robot with no good excuse for not
supporting a movement that, according to Postel, doesn't actually want
their support.  It's worth noting that RJ answers this question by
saying that Chomsky and Said are "towering figures of intellectual
life" in Iran, much to Postel's chagrin, thus he focuses his next two
questions are narrowly asking what "Liberals" and "pluralists" (i.e.
followers of Habermas and Berlin rather than Marx and Lenin) can do to
help.]

Q11: What, if anything, can liberals outside of Iran do to support
Iranian liberals? There are many who argue that Iran's issues are
internal and that western "outsiders" should stay out of them (a view
shared by both Islamists and many Marxists, it's worth noting). When I
interviewed Shirin Ebadi, she firmly rejected this position and
expressed a desire for "human rights defenders…university
professors…international NGOs" to support the struggle for human
rights in Iran. "All defenders of human rights," she said, "are
members of a single family." "When we help one another we're
stronger." As an internationalist and a universalist, what are your
thoughts on this question?

All of this is fairly in line with Postel's argument in general, which
is really hard to get behind in the end because he, from the first
chapter, seems bent on making it clear that Leftists should be
involved in this struggle even as they should also understand that the
people engaging in this struggle think that they are the intellectual
vermin of a bygone age (which is really Postel's position, who is the
true hero of the narrative.)  I could supply many other examples, but
I ultimately found the whole text just plain sloppy and an unfortunate
use of his connection in Iran for a sort of self promotion and, in the
end, an ideological prostheletyzing that only Fukuyama's Mama could
love.  In fact, the other thing he seems to set out to prove--that he
is different from the Neo-cons in his support for Iranian
dissidents--is ultimately only a matter of degrees.  He obviously
would rather be in bed with anyone who is anti-Marxist and pro-Iran,
than to build a broader bridge among progressives of all stripes.  If
you want to join his campaign, there is a certain set of ideas you
must believe.  It's only about Iran because he thinks they like Berlin
better than Lenin and he tries ceaselessly to make the point that this
is really the way it should be.

> In other words, the notion that large swaths of left-wing
> intellectuals in the west are actively campaigning on behalf of
> Iranian dissidents is simply absurd. It is a marginal cause at best.
> As I say in my book, conduct the following test: go to the websites
> of the most widely-read publications of the Left (New Left Review,
> Red Pepper, Z, CounterPunch, The Nation, The Progressive, In These
> Times, Mother Jones, CommonDreams.org, Indymedia, Monthly Review,
> Truthout, and so on), punch up the names of the Iranian dissidents I
> mention toward the end of Scott's interview with me, and see how many
> results you get. How many sympathetic profiles of, long-form
> interviews with, or even short articles about them will you find? I
> can save you the trouble, since I've done it: precious few.

On the other hand, throughout the book he makes parallels w/ South
America and the solidarity movements there (Why were leftists
interested in these?  Just because we already had people working
there?  It was closer to home?  The repressive governments were funded
and supported by our governments? It was ideologically more clear cut?
 Are these really good reasons?  Yes, Danny, they're pretty good
reasons.  And by taking this opportunity to educate people more about
what is going on in Iran to simultaneously villify the people who
don't know about it, you're not doing much good in creating a wider
conversation.   Moreover, in the first chapter he seems bent on making
it clear that the Iranian movements don't want help from "The Left" so
why should he be so surprised when "The Left" doesn't know about them?
 It doesn't matter: it is just evidence that not only is the Left
bankrupt, but the brilliant Iranian dissidents know this well.

In short, Iran has my personal support, I am interested in knowing
more about these movements, I thank Postel for bringing this to my
attention, but I'd rather he attempt to report a little more than
decide.  I can barely get past his playing the rusty trombone of
liberalism to pay attention to what's actually going on there.

s