What's the point for us in the belly of the beast? The point for us is to see how best to get the USA to come to terms with Iran and leave Iraq, leaving Iran's foreign policy to the Iranians. We essentially have to tell the Americans: if Iran gets Iraq after US withdrawal, so be it -- it's none of our business.
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/10/iran-as-regional-hegemon.html> Tuesday, October 02, 2007 Iran as Regional Hegemon
The Financial Times reports that "Iran is ready to help the US stabilise Iraq if Washington were to present a timetable for withdrawing its troops from the country, Tehran's top security official [Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council] said yesterday" (Roula Khalaf and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, "Iran Ready to Work with US on Iraq," 30 September 2007).
Why doesn't Washington take Iran's offer? Because the offer is to help Washington withdraw from Iraq, leaving a government friendly to Iran there. That is the last thing Washington wants, in fact, which is why it has not and will not take it. What Washington wants, instead, is to ensure that Iraq won't fall into the hands of Iran after it leaves -- hence the reluctance to withdraw any time soon.
What do leftists say about the offer? Urge Washington to take it? Only some do. Again, there is no coherence on the Left. Herein lies the problem. Only if Washington accepts Iran becoming a regional power, potentially capable of achieving hegemony over Iraq after US withdrawal, will it withdraw from Iraq. But some leftists have trouble accepting Iran becoming such a regional hegemon -- that's subimperialism or perhaps even imperialism in their opinion. So, there is no strong counter-discourse to the notion that "we can't let Iran have Iraq."
On 10/2/07, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:
>
> Qaddafi didn't come into power through social revolution, like the one
> that convulsed Iran from bottom up. Instead, he won state power
> through a bloodless coup d'état. It's easier for Washington to deal
> with a dictator who rules the passive population, whether to depose
> him (as in Iraq) or work with him (as in Libya), than with the
> collectivist leadership who lead the historically revolutionary and
> still very much politically active population like Iran's.
>
> Let's say Washington offers a deal, and Khamenei, et al. take it.
> Washington can't rule out that the people of Iran won't, sooner or
> later, undo it, either restoring the status quo ante or even taking
> their revolution to a new, higher stage.
> ==========================================
> The Iranians, of course, are not the only people to have made a revolution.
> The Soviet and Chinese revolutions of the past century - which were both
> more thoroughgoing than Iran's in that capitalism was eliminated -
> demonstrate revolutions are more easily reversible than we could have
> imagined.
Official Marxism of the formerly socialist states depoliticized people, for the USSR and the PRC had much less room for political debates and social conflicts in the public sphere than Iran.
That is the problem that Socialism of the 21st Century in Venezuela seeks to avoid, though that means slower and lesser transformation so far of political economy than Iran, let alone the USSR and the PRC.
The question is, can people use political supremacy and wrest "by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie"?
<http://monthlyreview.org/0707lebowitz.htm> Venezuela: A Good Example of the Bad Left of Latin America by Michael A. Lebowitz
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But, the idea of this socialism cannot displace real capitalism. Nor can dwarfish islands of cooperation change the world by competing successfully against capitalist corporations. You need the power to foster the new productive relations while truncating the reproduction of capitalist productive relations. You need to take the power of the state away from capital, and you need to use that power when capital responds to encroachments—when capital goes on strike, you must be prepared to move in rather than give in. Winning the "battle of democracy" and using "political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie" remains as critical now as when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.
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However, the success of this process is not at all inevitable. There are, as there have always been within the Bolivarian Revolution, powerful tendencies that point in the opposite direction. Not only the strong inclination of government ministers and managers in important state sectors to plan and direct everything from above (a pattern which has successfully crippled independent workers' movements) and not only the continuing culture of corruption and clientalism which can be the basis for the emergence of a new oligarchy. There is also a very clear tendency which supports the growth of a domestic capitalist class as one leg upon which the Bolivarian Revolution must walk for the foreseeable future.
No Chavists these days, of course, openly argue that socialism for the twenty-first century should depend upon capital. Rather, all insist that the process at this point requires the Bolivarian Revolution to tame private capital through "socialist conditionality"—i.e., by establishing new ground rules as conditions under which private capital can serve the revolution. In its best versions, this may be seen as a process of transition, that process of making "despotic inroads" and wresting, "by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie." Certainly, measures such as opening the books, imposing workers' councils with power, demanding accountability to communal councils, and transforming the workday by introducing education for worker management introduce an alien logic into capitalism—the logic of new socialist productive relations within capitalist firms.
However, the lack of clarity as to the nature of those ground rules means that mixed signals are being sent out. The "realistic" message that Venezuela is likely to have a "mixed economy" for a long time, that there is a place for private capital in the Bolivarian Revolution, and that a sufficient condition for access to state business and state credit is a commitment by capital to the interests of communities and workers has brought with it the formation of organizations such as Conseven, the "Confederation of Socialist Industrialists," and other private capitalist organizations busily defining private capital as socialist property. "Productive socialism," it is being said in meetings of "Chavist" capitalists around the country, requires private capitalists as part of the socialist model.
In this case, rather than the "elementary triangle" of socialism (units of social property, organized by workers through social production, for the satisfaction of communal needs), what is strengthened is the capitalist triangle: private ownership of the means of production, exploitation of wage laborers, for the purpose of profits. However lofty the language of social responsibility, the pursuit of profits dominates: commitment to the community becomes, effectively, a tax, and worker participation becomes shares in the company to induce workers to commit themselves to producing profits. As may be seen from the disappointing experience of the EPS (which has followed this pattern), capital accepts these constraints as conditions in order to ensure its right to exploit and generate profits until it is strong enough itself to impose capitalist conditionality.
The Bolivarian Revolution, like all revolutionary processes, produces its own potential gravediggers. To the extent that it fosters the infection of the logic of capital, the Bolivarian Revolution does not walk on two legs but, rather, has one leg walking backward. When we acknowledge that this tendency is flourishing within the process and add it to the continuing pattern of clientalism and corruption, the remaining enclaves of old capitalist power (in banking, import-processing, land-ownership, and the media), and the constant presence and threat of U.S. imperialism, it is obvious that there are formidable barriers to the struggle for socialism in Venezuela. -- Yoshie