> On 7/10/07, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
>> At issue is how to view political parties directed by clerics -
>> Christian,
>> Jewish, or Muslim - who want to use state power to impose their religious
>> values and laws on society.
>
[...]
> 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...for long periods of time, over centuries that it took
> them to build modern nations and states, beginning in the 15th century
> or thereabout.
> 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...
> What has been the chief contribution of Marxism to modernity?...
> 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.
=====================================
Few would deny that historical change is wrenching and bloody and involves
state coercion, and that Marxist regimes, despite an ideological commitment
to the self-activation of the masses, have been as guilty of forced
development as any other.
But what political conclusions flow from your analysis?
Do you still consider it useful to distinguish between secular left and religious parties in terms of their traditional social contituencies, the interests they represent, the goals embodied in their programmes, and their record in power?
Or have these parties, as you seem strongly to suggest, all shared the same commitment to "modernity" - that is, to the modern economies, political systems, and social values expressed most fully in the advanced capitalist countries? With the exception of some of the early Protestant sects, theocratic leaders and parties have historically resisted modernizing efforts by the liberal and socialist parties based in the cities.
I think this is still true of the religious parties, although they have had to moderate their views and adapt in varying degrees to modernizing forces depending on the level of social development in which they function. Thus, Protestant fundamentalists in the Southern US, for all their rhetorical religious zeal, have had to make more concessions to modern life than the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic, which draws it's strongest support in the countryside, has likewise had to accomodate to the urban bourgeoisie and working class in Tehran, and Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Sadrists would in power also have to mute or abandon their Islamization programs in order to conciliate their large heterogeous and secular urban populations and to participate in the world economy.
I largely agree with your knowledgeable summary of the political errors of the Iranian and Afghan left, although I don't think these were inevitable, and believe these regimes could have survived by slowing the pace of reform to account for the the social weight of the conservative landed classes. With the power of hindsight, this what I, as an Iranian and Afghan leftist, would have proposed. But my political home would have remained on the left, in opposition to the religious parties, competing for the same popular constituencies. Would you say the same? It is no longer clear to me, and maybe to others who occupy our small political space.