Marxists Must Stand Firm Against Ahmadinejad

[Joanne98]

July 12th 2009, by Maziar Razi - London Progressive Journal

Open letter to the workers of Venezuela on Hugo Chávez's support for Ahmadinejad

Honourable workers of Venezuela,

The Revolutionary Marxists of Iran are aware of your achievements as part of the Bolivarian Movement and have always supported this movement against the widespread lies and the open and covert interference of imperialism. In order to defend your invaluable movement and to confront the attacks and interference of US imperialism in Venezuela, labour and student activists in Iran have set up the ‘Hands Off Venezuela' campaign in Iran and during the past few years have stood together with you in confronting the imperialist attacks. It is obvious that your achievements were gained under the leadership of Hugo Chávez and, for this reason, you reserve deep respect for him.

In terms of his foreign policy, however, Chávez has made a mistake. With his support for Ahmadinejad he has ignored the solidarity of the workers and students of Iran with your revolution, and in a word, made it look worthless. Most are aware that two weeks ago Ahmadinejad, with the direct support of Khamenei, committed the biggest fraud in the history of presidential elections in Iran and then, with great ferocity, spilt the blood of those protesting against this fraud. You just have to take notice of the international media reports to be aware of the depths of this tragedy. All over the world millions of workers and students, and also those of Marxist and revolutionary tendencies (which mostly are the supporters of the Bolivarian revolution), protested against these attacks.

In of spite this, Chávez was one of the first people to support Ahmadinejad. In his weekly TV speech he said: "Ahmadinejad's triumph is a total victory. They're trying to stain Ahmadinejad's victory, and by doing so they aim to weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they won't be able to do it." And that "We ask the world for respect." These rash and baseless remarks from your President are a great and direct insult to the millions of youth who in recent days rose up against tyranny. Some of them even lost their lives. Many of these youths came out on the streets spontaneously and without becoming infected with the regime's internal disputes, or becoming aligned with the policy that US imperialism is following for taking over the movement. In addition, the remarks of your President are an insult to millions of workers in Iran. Workers whose leaders are today being tortured in the prisons of the Ahmadinejad government and some of them are even believed to be being punished with flogging. Workers who were brutally repressed by the mercenaries of the Ahmadinejad government for commemorating May Day in Tehran this year are still in prison.

So far Chávez has travelled to Iran seven times and each time he has hugged one of the most hated people in this country and called him his "brother". He does not realise that the economic, social and political situations of Venezuela and Iran are going in opposite directions. Although both countries have seen a similarly significant boost to their oil (and gas) revenues the contrast between the ways in which this extra money has been used by the two governments could not be more marked. In Venezuela this income is used for building hospitals, schools, universities and other infrastructure of the country, but in Iran it is used for lining the pockets of just a few parasitic capitalists.

On the one hand, in Venezuela, we have seen the nationalisation of an increasing number of companies and factories, the free provision of healthcare, education, civil liberties and so on. By contrast in Iran privatisation is on the government's agenda, even at the cost of trampling on Article 44 of the Constitution of the country and using the excuse of inefficiency and low productivity of state companies and factories. All these advances of the workers and the poor in Venezuela have given them greater control over the way they work and the way they live. Most importantly, the expropriation of factories and the encouragement of workers' control and participation have transformed the character of the workers' movement in Venezuela, advancing it by many stages. The Bolivarian movement and the policies of the government have brought about a huge shift in the balance of class forces in Venezuela in favour of the working class. Not only has the government encouraged the Venezuelan workers to build the Unión Nacional de los Trabajadores as an alternative to the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), but the workers have become involved in running and managing factories and other enterprises. The whole world knows that your government has even drawn up a list of 1,149 closed-down factories and given their owners an ultimatum: re-open them under workers' control or the government will expropriate them.

In Iran, on the other hand, on top of the lack of many basic democratic rights, the workers are also without any independent trade union rights. Today the workers of Iran do not even have a confederation like the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela. All they have are the Labour House, the Islamic Labour Councils and other anti-working class bodies tied to the state.

But this has not always been so: the overthrow of the Shah brought about many freedoms for workers including, in some cases, control over production and even distribution. Then, however, through repression the Islamic hierarchy managed to take back all the workers' gains. The leaders that your President hugs killed thousands of workers, destroyed the workers' movement and pushed it back by several decades. In Iranian society even the ‘yellow' pro-boss unions - that the Shah had tolerated - became and remain illegal. Even a CTV-style trade union confederation is illegal in Iran.

In Iran the official (and underestimated) unemployment rate stands at 10.85 per cent, with unemployment among the youth (15-24 year-olds) standing at 22.35 per cent. Even when workers are employed they are often not paid - in many cases for more than a year. Even those who get their wages face an impossible task in paying for the basic necessities of life, because their wage is not enough for living costs. For example, with the rent for a two-bedroom flat at $422 a month, a civil servant on $120 wages, or a teacher on $180, or even a doctor on $600 a month struggle to survive. It is no wonder that some 90 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.

The capitalist government of Iran has no fundamental disagreements or contradictions with US imperialism. It is in a ‘cold war' with America and when it receives enough concessions, it will quickly enter into political dealings with the US and will turn its back on you. Indeed, the Iran regime has already helped the Americans in their military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq - and installing the puppet regimes of Karzai and Maliki through significant trade, security and other deals. The capitalist government of Iran, despite the current apparent differences, is busy in close negotiations with the Obama government on resolving the problems of Afghanistan. This government, despite the "anti-imperialist" rhetoric, is heading towards re-establishing old links with the US. Ahmadinejad's selection demonstrates the final turn of the regime towards resolving its problems with imperialism. Despite all the "enmity" and "anti-imperialist" gestures the regime is ready to resolve all its differences with America. The government of Iran wants to turn Iran into a society like Colombia (in Colombia thousands of trade unionists have been killed so that multinational companies can exploit workers and plunder the country's natural resources without any obstacles). It is not without reason that the Iranian government has been implementing the bankrupt neo-liberal prescriptions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and counting the minutes until it joins the World Trade Organisation.

continued>>>
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4618

I agree. I love Hugo but he made a mistake on this one.

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. I think you're wrong on this one, Joanne, and that you're siding with the same rich

bums that brought about the oligarch capitalism, in Russia, which Putin and Medvedev have been trying - apparently to an appreciable extent, successfully - to attenuate, stabilising the country after the free-for-all, wrecked Chinese Communism, and usurped the government of Honduras.

The opposition have, apparently, bitterly accused Ahmedinajed of corruption. Apparently, he "bribed"* the poor by providing them with potatoes! An Enron, Worldcom, Goldman Sachs breeding ground, it isn't. Whenever the Western media show mass demonstrations in a particularly sympathetic light, particularly manipulated teenagers in coloured tee-shirts, beware.

* This was mentioned by a member of the Heritage Foundation on TV, probably CNN, who I felt tried to check himself, but too late. He'd blurted it out. Another guest, stunned me, since he too was a member of that august cistern, when he said that it was probably the true result by some margin.

[Joanne98]

2. I see Ahmedinajed and the clerics as the same thing as the Christian right.

Capitalism wrapped in theology.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Well, we evidently differ on that. But I expect whatever the truth is, will become

clear in due course.

[BolivarianHero]

8. One problem...

If your analysis has any basis in reality, why does every leftist faction in Iran support the movement against Ahmadinejad?

[LeftishBrit]

7. Agreed.

[justinaforjustice]

4. Iran is a Reactionary Theocracy, Witness Its Treatment of Women.

Iranian law gives fathers and husbands the right to control all the major decisions in the lives of their daughters and wives. Women must have permission from their fathers or husbands to go to school, to marry and to work. They have very few rights over the lives of their children and, while men can freely divorce their wives, women are deprived of that right and made to suffer in silence in bad marriages. Where women can overcome horrendous obstacles to obtain a divorce, they frequently lose their children. Ahmadinejad adamantly opposes equality for women, supporting the Sharia law rules governing women and family life. This is why women are in the forefront of opposing Ahmadinejad.

There is nothing revolutionary about the Ahmadinejad theocracy. One hopes that President Chavez will soon realize that support for Ahmadinejad is contrary to the principles of the Bolivar ian revolution.

[burning rain]

5. Educated, principled, and sane Marxists will.

But fatuous faux Marxists -- and they are many -- are a different story: they will embrace a theocrat, a feudalist, anyone who harangues the West.

[proteus_lives]

6. "sane Marxists"

There have been, what? 5-10 of those in the history of the world?

[BolivarianHero]

9. Ummm yeah...

The only Islamic societies in which the female population is near universal literacy are those which were once part of the Soviet Union. But facts that to get in the way of your pathetic attempts at red-baiting.

[proteus_lives]

10. Worth it?

Universal literacy was soooooo worth the gulags. Don't let those blinders slip! ;-)

[BolivarianHero]

11. Well okay...

I'm not denying those things existed, but can you realistically say that as a whole, Muslim women were more repressed in communist countries than in theocracies like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the more backwards parts of Pakistan?

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. I seem to remember reading that women in Iran were much more liberated than

in most other Moslem countries, with a very substantial number of professionals among them.

I suspect Ahmadinejad has a very poor hand to play with, and Ugo understands that. Noam Chomsky has some very interesting things to say about the country, its regime, and the difficulties put in its path. Chomsky evidently thought that the US would be seeking to foment the secession of various parts of Iran, in particular, the region where most of the oil exists, by encouraging the hardline theocrats. Those demonstrations would presumably have been pursuant to that. I think Ahmadinejad and Chavez were right to be very suspicious of the apparent killing of that girl, who looked more beautiful than 98% of Hollywood films stars. So, the Marxists don't seem to see the larger picture.

Here are some interesting articles:

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/2005

How about this*, from another site: ( http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2008/10/iran-oil-nuclear-chomsky-interview.html )
for dark humour?

*"The fact of the matter is that the majority of the world supports Iran. The non-aligned movement supports Iran. The majority of the world is part of the non-aligned movement. But they are not part of the world, from the U.S. point of view. It is a striking illustration of the strength and depth of the imperial mentality. If the majority of the world opposes Washington, they are not part of the world. Strikingly, the American population is not part of the world. A large majority of Americans -- something like 75 percent -- agree that Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy, if it is not for nuclear weapons. But they are not part of the world either. The world consists of Washington and whoever goes along with it. Everything else is not the world. Not the majority of Americans. Not the majority of countries of the world."

[proteus_lives]

15. They are different.

In theocracies women are oppressed for being women, in a communist country a woman is free as long as she tows the party line. Both are oppressive.

I believe in democracy (hopefully one day us and the rest of the world will successfully mix the best parts of socialism and capitalism) but I have read and seen too much to ever believe in communism or theocracies.

[LeftishBrit]

17. There is a matter of degree...

Communism as commonly practiced in government IS in a sense a form of theocracy, where an ideology is taken over by the rulers, and becomes the instrument of ensuring absolute power for them. Islam is used that way by the Taliban and Ahmadinejad and the Saudi rulers; Christianity was used that way by the Inquisition and to a somewhat lesser extent by Britain's 16th- and 17th-century rulers (e.g. 'Divine Right of Kings'); and socialism was used in this way by Stalin and Mao.

Stalin was a particularly oppressive and murderous dictator; other Soviet leaders were also oppressive but not to the same degree.

While I would not have been happy to have to live in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, I would certainly have greatly preferred it to living under the Taliban - and I think one of America's greatest mistakes was bolstering the forerunners of the Taliban because they were against Brezhnev and the Soviets. An example of the danger of treating the enemy of one's enemy as one's friend.

[The Traveler]

12. Actually, there have been many

Especially in Latina America. And a high percentage of them were dragged off in the dark of night by hooded thugs. Their fates are unknown, but can we can make an educated guess ...

As a body of philosophical work, Marxism is certainly much more fully and realistically developed than Objectivism. However, in my view,as a basis for economic policy both Marxism and its antithesis Friedmanianism suffer from a similar defect. They both are based on (different) assumptions which common experience tells us are unreasonable in any real world. Free markets do not automatically self correct all defects and are inevitably vulnerable to manipulation in the absence of regulation. (Free markets are much like the frictionless inclined planes of sophomore physics ... they exist only in your mind.) And those who dwell on an increasingly crowded planet and who are confronted with dwindling resource pools and rampant environmental damage cannot completely buy the presumptions of the Labor Theory of Value.

We need some new theories. That's my position. But just as the blood drenched hands of Pinochet cannot refute all the very real accomplishments of capitalism, neither can the gulags be used to ignore the many real accomplishments of Communism. Communist Russia went from a society of peasants and princes employing a transportation system largely dependent upon horses to lofting the first human being into orbit some fifty years later. By the standards capitalists themselves value (development of resources, establishment of an educated labor force, development of industrial capacity and advancement of technology) that was QUITE a stunning series of accomplishments.

The successes and failures of both Communism and Globablism as recently implemented must be considered by anyone who wants to create a better way forward.

Trav

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. Well spoken.

[proteus_lives]

16. I agree that there is worth to all systems.

I believe the future of the world is a mixture of socialism and capitalism. We need either something completely new or a successful hybrid of the previous two.

I don't like absolutism on either side of the scale and I don't like the sweeping of sins under the rug. For example:
"Communist Russia went from a society of peasants and princes employing a transportation system largely dependent upon horses to lofting the first human being into orbit some fifty years later. By the standards capitalists themselves value (development of resources, establishment of an educated labor force, development of industrial capacity and advancement of technology) that was QUITE a stunning series of accomplishments."

This is true but remember Lenin and Stalin had their revolution and modern Russia at the cost of millions of lives. The Ukrainian Holodomor for example.

[The Traveler]

18. A point that had already been covered

and a point with which I concur.

I am not trying to defend either system, actually. I am trying to keep my mind engineer/gear head like as I regard this topic. Let me look at a system and see its output, not just certain features of its output. Both the gulag and Gagarin are samples of the output of the USSR. Gagarin is cool. The gulag is not. And so forth.

Over the years, I have tried to identify "signature variable" ... measurable variables that give me some indication to how well a society is functioning. Infant mortality would seem to me to be variable of significant signature. Instinct and decency both demand we keep that as low as possible ... so when a relatively wealthy and technologically advanced nation like ours displays a relatively high infant mortality rate, that tells me something is wrong with the system. I seem to recall that high infant mortality was a signature also displayed by the Soviet Union. Hmmm ...

I remember the Soviet Union well. I worked as a "defense contractor" for a decade of the cold war. It would be incorrect to presume I am somehow a fan of the Soviet Union. However, the history of the post-Soviet era has exposed, in my view, serious systematic flaws in the new world economic order. Flaws which bring disaster to a majority of individuals and bode even greater harm for our nation and the world.

Again, in my view we need a new model.

Trav