> There used to be distinctions between secular left and religious
> parties, but today distinctions are fast disappearing, it seems to me.
>
> The secular left who used to be communist are no longer in favor of
> communism, and the secular left who used to be social democratic are
> no longer in favor of social democracy. On matters economic there is
> therefore convergence, rather than divergence, between religious and
> secular left parties.
[MG] You're right about the distinctions disappearing - and not only between secular left and religious parties, but between all parties. The system which expresses this "convergence" on "matters economic" is capitalism. Tiny Cuba is now the only country in the world which does not have a capitalist class. The degree of state ownership and control varies between countries, and capitalists are celebrated in some countries and viewed with suspicion in others, but in no country have the capitalists been expropriated politically or economically. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spectacular turn towards the market and the world economy by China, no one even talks about this anymore, except perhaps in Venezuela, and it has yet to go beyond the boundries of capitalism probed by Allende. It will take a global economic crisis before we see the same degree of political polarization as once existed within and between countries.
* * *
> [YF] If anything, some religious parties are clearly
> to the Left of some secular left parties. The sad reality is that, if
> Iran's power elite succeed in imposing the Chinese Communist Party's
> economic model upon Iran's working people, as many of them yearn to
> do, that will mean Iran moving to the Right, not to the Left.
[MG] What is fundamentally different about the Chinese and Iranian economies that each represents a distinct model? Iran's political system, in fact, is closer than China's to that of the West. The Ahmadinejad government is arguably more "populist" than the Chinese government which is hell bent on privatization and growth, but these economic policy options are not uncommon between capitalist countries or within capitalist countries at different times and under different parties.
* * *
> [YF] On the question of imperialism, too, some religious parties are to
> the
> Left of some secular left parties in the South, and in the North, all
> major secular left parties are part of the US-led multinational
> empire.
[MG] But is this inherent in being a "religious" or a "secular left" party? These distinctions are important in social policy, but not in foreign policy. You have had both secular left and religious parties leading anti-imperialist movements or collaborating with imperialism at different stages in their history.
I don't think you entertain the possibility that the next US administration, Republican or Democratic, will seek an accomodation with Iran for its own strategic purposes, but I think it is as least as much a possibility as an all-out regional war. If the former, a US retreat from a policy of regime change would be in exchange for a commitment by Iran to restrain Islamist opposition movements over which it has influence. This was the basis for the "normalization" of relations with both the USSR and China in the previous period, when Communism represented a far graver threat to capitalist stability than Islamism does today.
In such case, Iranian-US relations would be brought more into line with the kind of relationship which exists today between Iran and Europe, or for that matter, between the US and Brazil, the secular left government I think you have most in mind when you draw the contrast between the respective posture towards US imperialism of religious parties in the Mideast and "some secular left regimes in the South".
> [YF] Most who are secular leftists, especially in the West, are
> essentially
> social liberals, as "Andie" says, whether or not they are still
> sentimentally attached to old names, and on this, the question of
> rights, there is still divergence between secular left and religious
> parties, secular left parties more in favor of individual rights and
> personal freedoms as they are conceived in political liberalism, and
> religious parties, even moderate ones, much less committed to them.
[MG] Two questions arising out of your comment:
(1) Is it the case that the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah, and Hamas are less tolerant of bourgeois democratic norms and institutions than, for example, the "secular leftist" Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela? That's not my impression. The degree of commitment to these forms is less a function of ideology, than of the internal and external relationship of forces facing these governments.
(2) Are you in favour of preserving "individual rights and freedoms...conceived in political liberalism", and does that, by definition, lead you to identify yourself, with Andie, as a "social liberal"?