[lbo-talk] An Iranian socialist writes

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Sun Sep 30 08:27:06 PDT 2007


On 9/29/07, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "If you want to defend the people of Iran (which is what we have been
> doing), do so based on principles and not based on some realpolitik
> knee-jerk, bankrupt Cold War mentality that ends you up in bed with
> reactionaries."
>
> Yes, but reading this conjures up the
> through-the-looking-glass-world-problem that Lenin wrote about in 'Nascent
> Trends of Imperialist Economism' (here I go to 'Pseud's Corner').
>
> The Iranian socialist might be right about policy in Iran, but in (the UK as
> in) the US, the proper position is that the Iranian state has a right to
> develop such energy sources (and defences) as it sees fit.
>
> The way that the (British and) American people can earn the respect of the
> Iranian people is by limiting our government's sabre-rattling. That would
> help us to develop an independent political line from the establishment, and
> it would take the pressure of Iran - as well as undermining the Iranian
> government's appeal to a cross-class social solidarity in the face of US
> gunships.
>
> The Iranian socialist's appeal is well made if it is addressed to Iranians,
> but it means a different thing if it is read by liberals here who are
> uncomfortable defending the sovereign rights of the Islamic Republic of
> Iran.

There used to be a rough consensus on the Left along the line of your argument, but that consensus has broken down in the age of humanitarian imperialism, especially through the discourse of human rights, but also now apparently on such questions as energy policy. To compound the problem of the absence of consensus on sovereignty, many views exist on the Left regarding nuclear power in general: some think that nuclear power never or seldom makes economic sense; others think that it sometimes makes sense in some countries, but not in Iran (which probably is the dominant view in the global North); others think that it sometimes makes sense in some countries, including Iran; and others think that it makes sense in any country. I fear that, just as we lost in the case of Iraq, we'll lose in the case of Iran. Our enemy has a coherent argument, but we don't -- we don't agree on politics, or economics, or science. :-0

<http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/09/cacophony-on-left.html> Saturday, September 29, 2007 Cacophony on the Left

The US power elite are united on the points that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, is out to destroy Israel, supports "terrorist organizations" abroad, and is killing US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that therefore it must be stopped. They repeat these points over and over and over again, and they are beginning to stick. No one in the audience, presumably educated people, laughed when Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, a liberal man, hammered on them as if they were well established facts.

Leftists, in contrast, have no such unity.

How many opinions exist on the Left regarding Iran's nuclear program alone?

* "[C]ountries like Iran should possess nuclear arms

to constrain the global hegemony of the United

States." -- Slavoj Zizek

* "[U]nambiguously oppose any nuclear energy

development in Iran." -- Reza Fiyouzat

Between these two extremes are more nuanced voices like these:

* Iran's nuclear energy program makes economic

sense, and "[a]s long as the IAEA has not found Iran

in violation of its international obligations towards

nuclear weapons, the global community must not

give in to unreasonable pressure by those nations

that use international treaties as tools to advance

their and their allies' agenda." -- Muhammad Sahimi

* "We believe that the way out of the current crisis

passes through transparency of all the decisions

made and actions taken towards achieving nuclear

technology, winning the trust of the International

Atomic Energy Agency with respect to the extent

and goals of advanced industries in Iran, avoiding

any provocative statements and actions towards

the countries of the region, and planning the foreign

policy of the country based on the acceptable and

established principles of international policy." -- Tudeh

* "Countries don't get nuclear weapons to use them.

They get them to strengthen their bargaining power,

and to protect themselves from others. . . . Nuclear

weapons are better relegated to the scrapheap of

history, to be sure. The world would be a better place

without them. There is no guarantee that they will

not be launched, perhaps accidentally. But the

potential that Iran will build them, and after that the

possibility that it might use them, provide no reason

to go to war against Iran." -- John B. Quigley

And so on, and so forth. The public would be hard-pressed to figure out what exactly those in opposition to Washington want. Contradictory voices do not add up to a powerful coherent discourse that can effectively counter the US power elite's propaganda. -- Yoshie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list