[lbo-talk] Iran before Ahmadinejad (was capital punishment in Iran)

[wrobert at uci.edu]

To return to what I was saying briefly, I had two main points 1.  That
Carrol's claim about the left was factually wrong, and 2.  That the sort
of policy that he was implicitly advocating hasn't terribly effective (if
anything quite the opposite.)  When one looks at some of the disastrous
mistakes of the CPUSA and other solidarity organizations have made because
of an insistence on a sort of blind loyalty, I think it makes a strong
argument for a critical rather than uncritical solidarity.  I brought up
Said as a model of such a solidarity, but one could fine many other
examples such as Luxemburg, the Vinceramos Brigade, etc.  I have a certain
amount of sympathy for Yoshie's attempt to take an ally position for Iran,
and many of the comments against that implicitly operate from a logic that
Iran is not a complex and frequently problematic society that has seen a
great deal of shifts since the eighties and has a strong and robust civil
society.  But I am troubled by the suppression of the existence of a far
less appealing side of the society, particularly in the state apparatuses.

 I think it is possible to recognize that and to recognize that the
regime, warts and all, has infinitely more legitimacy than anything
created in Washington.  robert wood