No more than elements of ‘bourgeois’ ideology
And also – Danny Postel on the role the Iranian Left played in its own immolation:
An account of this self-defeat can be found in Maziar Behrooz’s book, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran, a salutary and, indeed, definitive reconsideration of the history of the pre-revolutionary Iranian Left.
As Maziar explains, the Iranian Left, or at least certain key fractions of it, helped fashion the noose the Islamists ultimately hung them with. According to Behrooz, the Khomeinites were able to do this in large part because the Tudeh party, the Fadaiyan Majority, and many other Iranian Marxist parties, whatever their differences with the Islamists, shared with them a profound hostility toward liberalism. Like [Ruhollah al-Musavi] Khomeini’s followers, dominant trends on the Iranian Left viewed democratic rights, civil liberties, and women’s rights as no more than elements of what they described interchangeably as “western,” “colonial,” or “bourgeois” ideology.
Oh did they – well how familiar, and how reckless, and how insane. Do democratic rights, civil liberties, and women’s rights seem like no more than elements of “western,” “colonial,” or “bourgeois” ideology now? There’s nothing like seeing democratic rights, civil liberties, and women’s rights yanked violently away to make one realize what nice things they are to have. Of course the first two, at least, weren’t abundant under the shah, but that’s a different story.
For the genuinely leftist project of internationalism and human emancipation, the profoundly authoritarian, repressive, reactionary, and proto-fascist regime that emerged out of the Revolution and has ruled Iran ever since is certainly tragic but also, and more accurately, catastrophic…
Khomeini’s gang may have disdained professedly secular, rational socialists, but on the Left the argument went that, because they were anti-American and anti-imperialist, the Khomeinites were “objectively progressive.”
We now know that the Left’s was a demented, disfigured, ultimately catastrophic argument, one that had lethal consequences for those who propounded it. There was nothing progressive about Khomeini’s anti-imperialism. It was authoritarian and regressive, as is [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s anti-imperialism today. Whether Khomeini’s rhetoric was truly anti-imperialist is open to debate—but to the extent it was, it amounted to no more than an anti-imperialism of fools.
Quite. Let us have no messing around – no anti-imperialism of fools, no anti-secularism of fools, no anti-liberalism of fools, no multiculturalism of fools. There is nothing progressive about authoritarian regressive theocratic communalism. The hell with it.
Via Norm.
My thoughts exactly. To hell with it.
Wherever oppressive military regimes step aside for representative government, the military always (I can’t think of an exception) reserves in its own eyes the right to sieze power once again should it deem it necessary, and always retains the capacity to do it as well. Again, I can’t think of an exception.
So the ‘democratic’ regimes of Eastern Europe, SE Asia and Latin America run their countries because the military castes choose to let them. Let democratic politics get a bit wild in military eyes, and they will be back. The military castes of such countries are there as a backup for the domestic police, who in turn are there to back up the ruling classes and the imbalances of wealth and power. Most of those countries (again, I cannot think of an exception) are in no real danger of invasion from their neighbours.
However, wherever an oppressive regime has lost power to an armed uprising from the populace (Russia 1917, China 1949, Vietnam 1954-1975, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979) it has never resulted in the rise of a liberal democracy. In the case of the ‘Marxist’ revolutions, this went against Marx’s own view that liberalism was a necessary element of the future society he envisaged.
Sadly, anyone who takes a prominent role in any such revolutionary movement runs the danger of reprisal organised from inside or outside their country, fostering in turn suspicion and illiberalism if not outright paranoia, manifest in Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and others. It is a bit analogous to the eternal vendetta cycle which operates between tribes in New Guinea and elesewhere. Everyone partaking in a reprisal raid is aware they are provoking yet another counter-reprisal.
The most liberal regime Iran ever had was the government headed by Mohammed Mossadeq, which was overthrown by the coalition behind the Pahlavis in 1954, which coalition included the CIA and MI5. The sad fact is that most of the time, the people elected to power in countries with representative democracy are not themselves democrats.
Extremes of wealth and poverty (and the illiteracy and ignorance that generally accompanies the latter) are the basis of illiberalism. I would like to be persuaded otherwise, but I am afraid there is no short-term answer for this.
Pedar-e Jomhuri Islamiya sukhte ast?
My pidgin Farsi is intended to say, ‘Are the fathers of the islamic revolution burnt (ie in hell)?
The point of the post is valid – that the left parties that were keen for revolution were not keen on liberalism based on their own ideological blindness. However Iran is a country that confounds and overmatches the preconceptions and hopes of us outsiders. The Hezbollah would have dragged down and executed the commies whatever they thought of liberalism; all that this note does is remind us what douchebags those hard leftists were.
The Iranian educated and liberal class was a creation of the past rulers (1920s onward) who intentionally built a class that could provide staff for a modern public service. For that reason they had weak connection with the rural and poor that became the base of the islamists, and little worthwhile influence with the ruling elite for a long time after the revolution.
Two possible semall corrections.
Should not the last word of the penultimate sentence of the original post read: “communism” – without the “l” ??
And I can think of at least one exception to Ian MacDougall’s “rule”.
England.
Cromwell’s military autocracy was overthrown by Monck’s March in 1660, leading to the restoration of the (semi-constitutional) monarchy. Come to that, the whole thing was repeated, courtesy of William of Orange, 28 years later. It’s called “The Glorious Revolution”.
Not sure if the Glorious Revolution ushered in anything resembling liberal democracy. Didn’t the very word ‘democracy’ have overtones of godless anarchist violence in 1688?
Though actually I can think of a revolution that did succeed in transforming a repressive oligarchy into a democracy – the Industrial Revolution.
I attended a CFI talk last year by Maryam Namazie, speaking about the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain.
She left Iran as a child just as the Khomeinites were taking over, and although not the focus of her talk she touched on the alliance between the Iranian left and the Khomeinites.
Although the Iranian left embraced western secular values they did do a deal with the devil in order to overthrow the monarchy. It was more likely political naivety than any shared ideology with the theocratic Khomeinites that lead to their downfall.
“…the bizarre sight of leftists defending some of the most reactionary people on earth…” Quite so, Lisa.
Behind all the anti-imperialist rhetoric there is also to be found that modern political shibboleth ‘pragmatism’. Do whatever it takes to reach the goal. A convenient alliance with the devil if it might help; except it never does.
Ironically, the most truly pragmatic ‘pragmatism’ is adherence to principle.
Tingey, no, I meant communalism, not communism – as should be obvious (the sentence makes no sense with ‘communism’ – Khomeini was no communist).
Shouldn’t the third word of your comment be ‘small’ not ‘semall’?
Thanks for the help with spelling and proofing, anyway.
Heh, dzd…the thing is, those “college-Marxists” (alas, not just confined to colleges) are so blinkered and historically/culturally illiterate that they don’t even consider that many of those unpleasant aspects (oppression of women, gays, oppression of disfavored groups, no free speech, corruption and nepotism) are seen as net positives and even as commandments of the deity by reactionary clerics, leaders, and others whose interest is in maintaining the religious/cultural status quo. What ends up happening is that these naive leftists who fall for that simplistic narrative end up being taken for a ride by the cynical religiocrats (for lack of a better word) and end up chewed up and spat out, as OB noted in her post mentioning the failure of the left in Iran. “Manly Marxists” saving the world, indeed, to the point where the poor victims are barely seen as humans with their own motives and beliefs at all but as background for the grand battle of “good vs. evil” to play itself out.
Sometimes (to move it back to the US) I think that good-hearted liberals who don’t want to offend the deeply held beliefs of the religious are being taken for a similar ride by very un-liberal religious leaders of any faith, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, who nominally claim adherence to some liberal platform or rules (in the old sense of “liberal,” not necessarily “liberal” in the Democratic sense, though some do that as well) but use their “in” with politicians to work behind the scenes in order to get their agenda enacted. I get a bit uneasy when I read things by liberal, progressive Catholics (for example) who nevertheless push for religious exemptions on “free exercise” grounds and also for religion and religious arguments to be given more “respect” and “legitimacy” in the public square, and implicitly that this will lead people to realize just how progressive Catholic social teaching really is, and why liberals should join in with the Church rather than rejecting it so disdainfully and disrespectfully. (Religious liberals of this sort tend to be big on “respect.”)
Quite – like Stephen Carter, and (I’m sorry to say) Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum was in favor of the ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act.’ Urk.
dzd: Yes, one of the attractions of any religion is its universal application. Within its scope it holds all the answers, and to every question; and it offers them to young people who are often searching for just that.
The only such quasi-religious doctrine not to have an uneasy relationship with rational enquiry and science was classical Marxism. But then Stalin’s orthodox ascendancy rang the final curtain down on that with the anathema pronounced on Lysenko and Mendelian genetics. That is, apart from the killing of his political opponents, left, right and centre. Seen as necessary, because God’s elect must have both devils and outer darkness.
Poor old Marx. Surveying the wreckage today he would probably say ‘thank God I was never a Marxist.’
I don’t agree with everything said in the Postel post in Platypus linked to by OB, but it’s a good read all the same.