> On Oct 15, 2007, at 1:43 AM, Lenin's Tomb wrote:
>
>> Of course we should argue that as a starting point, but you know as
>> well as
>> I do that this won't decide the propaganda struggle.
>
> And saying the Iranian regime isn't really so bad - or, more
> ambitiously, is something of which Gramsci would have approved - will
> decide the propaganda struggle? It might, actually - just not the way
> you or I would like.
====================================
I still maintain there's a lot of intellectual energy being wasted on a
"propaganda struggle" which can only erode rather than develop the broadest
possible opposition to US policy against Iran, which both sides claim to
want. Whether leftists defend the Iranian leadership along with Yoshie,
Julio, and LT, or defend Iran while indicting the leadership, as Dabashi,
Doug, and others do, will have virtually NIL effect on US policy towards
Iran, or how Americans react to that policy.
This isn't only because the left is today tiny and ineffectual. Even when it was rooted in the working class and had a mass influence, the development and outcome of the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union - and how the American masses perceived that conflict - had almost nothing to with the "propaganda struggle" waged which such conviction between the partisans of Stalin and Trotsky. Then also you had leftists squabbling among themselves about whether public criticism of the Stalin leadership undercut the struggle to defend the USSR, or whether it was necessary to aid the defence of the USSR by sharply distinguishing its historical accomplishments from its "counter-revolutionary" leadership.
In the end, US policy and American public opinion towards the USSR were determined by economic and geopolitical considerations, rather by the political character of the Soviet regime. While the issue of whether Stalin was a "progressive" or a "Thermidorian" provoked lively and heated debate among left intellectuals for decades, the allied Western powers during this period reacted to it in a number of different and conflicting ways - first taking military action against it, then joining it in a military alliance, then accepting to coexist. The shifting policies on both sides were based on the evolving relationship of forces between them and on the overall world situation and less on their political colouration.
The nature of the Soviet regime similarly had little effect in shaping mass attitudes. These were more conditioned by the level of class polarization within capitalist society. From the Russian Revolution through World War II, when capitalism was more unstable and the struggle between the classes more pronounced, there was a great deal of sympathy for the "workers' state". This had more to do with the instinctive hostility of the workers towards their own capitalists and politicians than with any strong feelings about Stalin, although loyalty to the Soviet leadership was a natural outgrowth out of loyalty to the state. When the situation turned in the postwar period and material conditions improved markedly, the attitudes of the masses towards their own societies and the USSR changed with them. But in no case - neither in the 30s nor in the 50s - was "Stalinism" or subsequent "de-Stalinism" a defining issue. Had it been, Khruschev would have had a greater following in the Western working class than Stalin at one time enjoyed.
The present discussion over the Iran regime on this list is a much weaker echo of that earlier debate, and on a much lower level. Passions are not being stirred over what at least was an avowedly socialist regime - but over an Islamic one, no less!
The above can be read as an elaboration of the point I made earlier that 'these disputes about the regime are not crucial outside their countries of origin. They only become important within anti-intervention movements abroad when these differences are unnecessarily exaggerated, resulting in mischievous bickering and division."
I've already made my views known where I think the responsibility for exaggerating the differences over the "Iranian Question" lies.