Still, this has been a battle of titans, a son et lumiere of intelligence! Highly enjoyable.
Bob W --- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
>
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