[lbo-talk] Made in Iran

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Sun May 20 18:12:08 PDT 2007


I wrote: On 5/15/07, Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> In the way I define social revolution i.e. the abolition of the wages system,
> inequality of political power and with that, massive differences in the
ability
> to tap in to the wealth created by the assoicated producers, would have been
> obliterated.

Yoshie correcte me:

The abolition of the wage system is called socialist revolution, which most Iranians did not, and still do not, favor.

*********** Agreed...mostly. As I said, what happened in Iran was a political, not a social revolution. A theocratic class won domination of the State apparatus, replacing a monarchist one. This happened relatively peacefully with the very important help of organized workers in the Iranian petroleum industry. Capitalist social relations/wage labour remained in force after this political revolution, ergo the Iranian revoution was not a "social revolution" as the author of the orginal article you posted to the list was arguing. Neither was it a "socialist revoution" as you correctly point out.

BTW, I got my definition of social revolution from Marx: ***** A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level [...] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.

If there is a state [gosudarstvo], then there is unavoidably domination [gospodstvo], and consequently slavery. Domination without slavery, open or veiled, is unthinkable -- this is why we are enemies of the state. What does it mean, the proletariat organized as ruling class?

It means that the proletariat, instead of struggling sectionally against the economically privileged class, has attained a sufficient strength and organization to employ general means of coercion in this struggle. It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as class. With its complete victory its own rule thus also ends, as its class character has disappeared.

full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm *** Best, Mike B)

An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org.au/

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