I think you are both basically correct in your description of the reasons why rural-based "backward" movements are often backed ny self-described leftists over urban-based "progressive" ones, but it has yet to be determined that what is happening in Iran is actually reducible to the country-vs.-city schema. You're talking about what is happening in foreigners' heads about what to think about Iran, not what is happening in Iran.
--- On Wed, 7/1/09, Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] I say banana, you say bikini (was: those exotic Iranians)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 1:33 PM
>
>
>
> --- On Wed, 7/1/09, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>
> wrote:
>
>
> > nostalgia for rural society and the simple, communal,
> > pastoral life it was
> > seen to represent predates mass education, however,
> and
> > seems to me to have
> > been essentially a reaction to the growth of industry
> and
> > cities, seen as
> > the habitat of rapacious and unscrupulous capitalists
> and
> > their commercial
> > values. This attitude was especially pronounced among
> young
> > hippies,
> > anarchists, and third worldists in the 60's, and
> remains a
> > thread on the
> > contemporary left. Romantic aesthetes and
> anticapitalist
> > intellectuals on
> > the right have also recoiled from urban slums teeming
> with
> > vagrants,
> > immigrants, crime, and disease, and "cosmopolitan"
> radicals
> > taking aim at
> > the patriotic and religious traditions and
> institutions of
> > the host culture.
>
> [WS:] No doubt about the "romantic" allure of the
> myth of rural society to hippies, anarchists, third
> worldists etc. This is, in essence, utopian
> socialism. But my question is why such a backward
> looking utopia has so much attraction to people who claim
> Karl Marx in their ideological ancestry. Why not
> forward looking utopia promoted by Marx?
>
> Or to phrase it differently, idyllic rustic utopias used to
> be a playground for aristocracy, cf. Marie Antoinette's
> peasant village near Versailles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petit_hameau
> . I can see certain emotional gratification to the
> parasitic rich flowing from such role reversal game i.e.
> pretense of engaging in productive work. But what does
> this utopia offers the self-styled defenders of the working
> class against capitalist predators? Is it just another
> example of proles aping aristocrats akin to hunting?
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>