I rather think that Iran's history has already created the national-popular. The problem is that the national-popular in Iran has been shaped by both what Hamid Dabashi calls "colonial modernity" and (sometimes productive, sometimes counter-productive) reaction against it (a problem that is hardly unique to Iran). Cosmopolitan Iranian intellectuals -- even those who like Dabashi can sympathetically understand the national-popular, which is predominantly religious, in Iran -- are estranged from it by virtue of their class backgrounds and cultural dispositions among other things. The question is how Iranians may reform the national-popular -- in a way that can allow for the objective and subjective homecoming of those cosmopolitan intellectuals in exile who, like Dabashi and my Persian teacher, do not dismiss Islam or despise religious Iranians -- while resisting cultural imperialism at the same time, which is the question I raise here: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/10/shiism-scientific-and-utopian.html>.
A popular Iranian film called Maxx (Dir. Saman Moghaddam), released in 2005, raises a similar question. (I highly recommend it -- it's hilarious.) The answer to these questions, however, can only come from practice in Iran.
> > Gramsci posed a question: ". . . does there exist an absolute identity
> > between war of position and passive revolution? Or at least does
> > there exist, or can there be conceived, an entire historical period in
> > which the two concepts must be considered identical -- until the point
> > at which the war of position once again becomes a war of
> > maneuver?"
> > (Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 108).
> >
> > That historical period is now. Today, what is on the political agenda
> > is indeed a war of position, and it is in this context I consider the
> > concepts of hegemony and passive revolution as useful ones for
> > working toward social change, especially in such countries as
> > Iran and Venezuela.
>
> I think that this does a lot of theoretical work for you. The
> troubling aspect to this is that it operates on a fairly reductionist
> reading of Gramsci. As the notebooks point out, Gramsci's concept of
> a war of position and a passive revolution are fairly ambiguous and
> contradictory. The answer to the question above is that this linkage
> seems fair.... sometimes. This links to the way the way the Italian
> Risorgimento is both a creation of the Italian nation and a
> restoration of the monarchy. The creation of a republic is never
> fully successful. At other times, Gramsci links the war of position
> with a necessary struggle within advanced capitalist societies, which
> capitalist hegemony has reached a certain sophistication. This
> conceptualization of a war of position doesn't link up with a
> conceptualization of passive revolution and its dialectic of
> revolution and restoration. I think that when we conceptualize
> 'passive revolution in the way that Gramsci intended it, as a
> combination of restoration and revolution then it doesn't offer an
> adequate explanation of Venezuela, although the concept of the war of
> position does. Ultimately, I think a contemporary theory of the war
> of position would have to delink it from the passive revolution,
> which is, when you read it closely, a theory of counter-revolution.
In both Iran and Venezuela, the capitalist class have not been liquidated, and in both countries new elements entered into upper classes though the very processes of social revolution. Passive revolution, therefore, is a useful concept for me to grasp contradictory aspects of populism.
> > What is passive revolution? Gramsci put it this way: "what was
> > involved was not a social group which 'led' other groups, but a State
> > which, even though it had limitations as a power, 'led' the group
> > which should have been 'leading' and was able to put at the latter's
> > disposal an army and a politico-diplomatic strength" (Selections from
> > the Prison Notebooks, p. 105).
>
> As I said before, I don't think that this has anything to do with
> Venezuela. It ignore the importance of the popular movement and the
> ways that its active involvement in politics has shaped the movement
> as well as allowing it to stay in power. The 'revolution' has
> allowed for active involvement in Venezuelan politics that was
> unimaginable in earlier eras. It has also explored the
> possibilities of creating new property relations and is currently
> trying to reintegrate the economy. It seems that Venezuela's
> advocates have been caught up in the image of Chavez as much as its
> opponents when the real importance is in the transformation of
> everyday social relations.
The transformation of everyday social relations in Venezuela could not have happened, and cannot be sustained, without Chavistas' conquest of the state and oil revenues.
> I don't know if it will succeed, but I
> would like to be pointed to something similar with the contemporary
> Iranian situation.
Political participation in Iran happens both inside and outside the machinery of its corporatist state and para-state structures. Activism is much more decentralized in Iran than in Venezuela. Works of scholars like Nikki Keddie, Louise A. Halper, Valentine M. Moghadam, and so on regarding women's activism, for instance, would help us see the difference between Iran and Venezuela while recognizing women's protagonism in Iran. -- Yoshie