To understand the state of the world today, you have to have a long-term perspective, as long as that of Zhou Enlai, who, asked to assess the French Revolution, replied, "It's too early to tell."
How did modernity as we know it in Europe and Japan come about? By bloody imposition of laws and values, _including religious laws and values_ (e.g., establishment of national churches in Europe, which broke the imperial authority of Catholicism, suppression of Christianity in Japan, which saved the country from Western colonialism) for long periods of time, over centuries that it took them to build modern nations and states, beginning in the 15th century or thereabout. In the words of Ernest Renan, "Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of _all_ political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is _always_ effected by means of brutality" (emphasis added, "What Is a Nation?" <http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/e_renan.html>). Renan is right. Only by virtue of those forgotten deeds of violence, which included religious violence by rebels as well as by sovereigns, do the Europeans and the Japanese enjoy modernity today, largely free of religion due to their peculiar circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated elsewhere.
When did people in the global South begin to do the same? Around the early 19th century in Latin America, and around the mid-19th century in the rest of the world. Therefore it is no wonder that sometimes some areas of the South (like Afghanistan from the so-called "Saur Revolution" to the present) look as if they were in the middle of Sengoku Jidai, and other areas (like the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War) look as if they were under Sakoku with Fumie. They embarked upon the business of modernity about three centuries later than the European and the Japanese, under the constant menace of colonialism and imperialism.
What has been the chief contribution of Marxism to modernity? The dictatorship of the party, which, through its centralized bureaucracy that powerfully enhanced efficiency, doing away with inefficiency of democracy, generally speeded up the process of nation and state building, creating a modern national army, unifying the territory under a common political authority, inculcating a common political identity, standardizing languages and cultures, instituting modern education, modernizing social norms, and industrializing economy. Even when the dictatorship of the party succeeded in building a nation under a state and ushering both into modernity, it usually took a far larger toll than the Islamic Revolution due to the aforementioned speed-up, and when it failed, it resulted in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
On 7/10/07, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Whatever the subjective errors which explain the decline of the left - and I
> don't doubt there have been these - I don't think we should overlook that a
> major reason for the current imbalance of forces is the unremitting
> hostility to left-wing nationalism by Western imperialism and its more
> ambivalent posture, at least initially, to religious nationalists who they
> used as a counterweight to it. The CIA-sponsored overthrows of Mossadegh and
> Najibullah led to the triumph of the Islamists in Iran and Afghanistan and
> the the movement's subsequent prestige and influence - relative to that of
> the declining left - throughout the Muslim world.
There was nothing like a "nation" in the territory called Afghanistan, and when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan came into power, it never could subdue the countryside. (It is wrong to think that any party could start social revolution without first building mass bases in the countryside in countries like Afghanistan.) The party was never united either, and the bloody chaos of the intra-party conflict first pitting the Khalq faction against the Parcham faction and then Hafizullah Amin's wing of Khalq killing Nur Muhammad Taraki and his wing (cf. "Soviet Report on Afghanistan," <http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/337.html>) -- which probably took a higher toll than the suppression of the Mojahedin and other leftists in the Islamic Republic of Iran -- alarmed the Soviets. The Soviets are said to have killed Amin who was giving a bad name to socialism in their opinion, and proceeded to send in its own troops to protect the new PDPA regime, now under Babrak Karmal of the Parcham faction, that they installed from various factions of rebels backed by the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran (which was mainly backing Ismail Khan: Thomas H. Johnson, "Ismail Khan, Herat, and Iranian Influence," Strategic Insights 3.7, July 2004, <http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2004/jul/johnsonJul04.asp>), in the process undermining Soviet socialism itself.
One of the few parts of Afghanistan that enjoy relative calm today is Herat, still under the influence of Iran: "A City Reborn: Five Years in Herat," <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6206258.stm>. I'd venture to say that the Iranians, in possession of linguistic advantage, know what they are doing in Afghanistan better than the Soviets did then or the Americans and Europeans do now.
Unless people of Afghanistan come up with a common national identity, upon the NATO's departure, the Northern half of it will be ruled by Persian-speaking men who are friends of Iran and the Southern half by Pashto-speaking men who are backed by Pakistan: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Languages_of_afghanistan-provinces.jpg>.
As for Mohammed Mossadegh, he was more fortunate than the PDPA men. By the time he became Prime Minister, Iran was already a nation, unlike Afghanistan. But the nation was underdeveloped, and the people were fractious and rebellious. Upon nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the British withdrew technicians, which made it impossible for Iran to operate its oil industry for six months. While oil revenues dwindled, his populist policy failed to stem inflation and unemployment. At the same time, he faced the frequently uncooperative parliament with a lot of royalist and pro-British deputies (only 30 out of 79 deputies belonged to or were close to the National Front), royalist army officers disgruntled by his defense budget cuts, purges, etc., his own National Front divided between its modernist and traditionalist wings, provincial and linguistic minorities demanding their shares of power, the National Front and the Tudeh sometimes violently clashing in the streets. . . .
The Tudeh, though it supported Mossadegh during the Siyeh-i Tir, July 21st, uprising of 1952 that restored him to power after his confrontation with the Shah and resignation in protest, largely pursued the policy of confrontation:
Having won the debate, the [Tudeh Party's] hard-liners put
into effect their policy. The Coalition of Workers' Syndicates
held mass meetings to demand higher wages, protest
government restrictions, and complain that the police were
helping the rival unions set up by the Toilers' party and its
main thug Sha'yban "the Brainless." The Union of Railway
Workers organized demonstrations to challenge Mossadeq's
proposal to disenfranchise illiterates. The Society of
Democratic Youth sponsored teach-ins to "expose the
conspiracy between the shah and his prime minister." The
Society of Democratic Women celebrated the forty-fifth
anniversary of the Constitutional Revolution by demanding
the right to vote and criticizing the government for its
reluctance to extend the franchise. The Tudeh press
constantly portrayed Mossadeq as a feudal landlord, a
devious old-time politician, and a stooge of the United States.
And the National Society against the Imperialist Oil Company
brazenly defied a government ban on street parades and
organized demonstrations that clashed violently with the police
and the Toilers' party. The administration retaliated by
imposing martial law on Tehran and arresting eighty-six Tudeh
activists. In 1951-1952, the Tudeh supported the National
Front only during the July uprising, when the danger from the
shah appeared imminent.
In later years, the more moderate leaders criticized the
hard-liners for pursuing "ultraleft policies." One recent
historian of the student movement has written that the party's
youth organization during the Mossadeq era held
unauthorized demonstrations, published inflammatory articles,
manifested symptoms of romantic heroism, and considered
itself rather than the working class as the vanguard of the
socialist revolution. Kambakhsh wrote that inexperienced
leaders had undermined Mossadeq by raising irresponsible
demands, such as the immediate establishment of a
democratic republic. Kianouri, speaking at a seminar on
the national bourgeoisie, declared: "an incorrect assessment
of the role of the national bourgeoisie sometimes leads to
mistakes. . . . Such left-wing sectarian mistakes were made
by our Tudeh party between 1949 and 1953 during the
struggle for oil nationalization. Iraj Iskandari explained,
During the struggle for the nationalization of the
Iranian oil industry we did not support Mossadeq,
who undoubtedly represented the interests of the
national bourgeoisie. . . .
(Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions,
Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 322-323)
While it is clear that Mossadeq pursued many conservative polices, far more conservative socially and economically than the policies of the Islamic Revolution, sometimes because he himself believed in them, and sometimes because he had to do so in an attempt to gain or retain the support of conservative nationalist leaders and masses, the Tudeh should have supported him regardless, to defend the nation from royalists and imperialists. As it happened, their policy of confrontation added to the division of the nation that made the job of coup plotters easier.
That -- the folly of pursuing sectarian policy even at the cost of losing the country to the empire -- ought to be a lesson for the Iranians today, who remain as fractious and rebellious as they were. -- Yoshie
