Re: AUT: socialist dreams and the Iraqi Left

[Dave Antagonism <activelittleminds@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi comrades. My understanding of the splits in the two Worker-Communist parties is as follows:
a minority 'left' faction split in Iraq to form "Socialism Now"
in Iran it was the more rightist leadership that split to form a minority party on a more liberal/social democratic platform. The issues seems to be if the struugle is one for socialism right now or a restoration of civil society.- Neither really that perfect, but interesting none the less
cheers
Dave

benjamin rosenzweig <lumpnboy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
---
ThThiagopOppermanndifference_3ngngineahoo.com.brbrwrote:

>
> We can all wish the resistance was a one big happy
> union, and we can also
> wish that Iraq was Sweden. But the fact is that
> these people in the Iraqi
> left, aside from being filthy nationalists who are
> little better than Sadr
> and just as certain to bring tyranny, are cowards.
> When the clock struck and
> it was time to hoist the black flag, roll up the
> sleeves and cut throats,
> they umummednd aaaah a lot, some struck deals with
> Americans, other tried to
> make themselves relevant by denouncing those who
> struck these deals, which
> is a rerecipeeor making oneself twice as irrelevant.
> Then tbtbyasting the
> faithful as a bunch of retrogrades waging war on
> Iraqis, these slivers of
> westernized dissent made themselves rather
> indistinguishable from the
> cocooptedThey completely misread the mood of the
> population, which was
> baying for scalps rather than sunny about some
> hallucinatory opportunity for
> socialism. They forgot that it was going to be very
> painful to be free, that
> it takes a lot of ununfreedomand I think a lot of
> these wusses secretly or
> not so secretly hoped the Americans would protect
> them from the fury of
> their own people. Meanwhile, smart and cruel folk
> like Sadr and his
> followers have been doing the important work of
> terrorizing the society and
> making it hell for everybody, which is highly likely
> to make the American
> project there fail, or take on an increasingly
> aggressive character, which
> is tantamount to failure.
>
> ThThiago>
>
>
> --- from list
> auautp-sysyists.village.vivirginiadedu--
>

I'm not sure what you're referring to as the Iraqi
Left, but I don't think this is a totally accurate
description of a pretty contradictory set of
phenomena.

The Iraqi Communist Party, as is well known, has been
with the Coalition since the occupation began. It had
previously been part of Saddam's governments, a
decision which had led to a substantial split when it
was made decades ago, with the splitters (ICP Central
Command - not an attractive name) trying guerrilla
warfare. These Communists are neoliberals. Remnants of
the ICP CC are still around, some I believe in Iraqi
Democrats Against the Occupation. I don't really know
what these people are these days, though some of their
statement are available arond the place including
their website.

The other notable tendency of Leftists is
'worker-communism', especially the Worker-Communist
Party of Iraq (WPI). The self-described
worker-communist parties in Iran and Iraq are in fact
some of the only Left organisations in the middle east
that consistently define themselves as
anti-nationalist. And yes they have been uninvolved
with most of the actions people refer to as
'resistance' - the Iranian revolution and its
aftermath were pretty important to this tendency, and
I don't think they want a repeat of being slaughtered
by previous 'allies' in insurrection. Sadr's paper
called for the murder of communists and didn't just
mean the CP collaborating with the US/UK/etcetera.
Members of the WPI have experienced the violence of
political Islam since the invasion, up to murder.

However, the formal radicalism of the
worker-communists program (anti-nationalist and
anti-capitalist) seems to jar with immediate proposals
for, effectively, a radical social democratic secular
state - can you have a state but not a nationalism?
Nonetheless, their anti-nationalism is long-standing
and, in the context of the 'anti-imperialist' hegemony
in the middle eastern Left, makes the description of
them as 'filthy nationalists' seem a bit harsh, unless
you know things I don't. (Their nominal anti-statism
has substantial limits, certainly, including
supporting the French laws banning the hijab etcetera,
for reasons derived from specific experiences of
political Islam (being tortured and murdered or
fleeing into exile, for example) but nonetheless I
think pretty clearly an unappetising idea of how to
'promote' secularism. And of course the WPI is a party
in what I understand to be quite a traditional sense,
with what this necessarily entails.)

The WPI have concentrated their activity on the
unemployed workers movement (several rallies against
the administration of over a hundred thousand people)
and the movement of 'workers councils', as well as on
opposition to efforts to impose any version of sharia
law. They seem pissed off that Western Leftists are
concentrating on supporting the 'resistance' that will
kill workers and communists while ignoring what they
say are (a) impressive and substantial movements of
proletarians, and (b) the only tendencies that can
potentially mean something other than what they call a
'dark scenario' whether the US etc. stay or not.

The Iraqi worker-communists themselves split about a
month ago, and there is now a Left Worker-communist
Party of Iraq (and a split in the Iranian party too I
think). Their initial statements were on the
socialismnow website but I've found it impossible to
access this in the last couple of days, which is odd.

If other people know more...

Benjamin



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com




--- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---


The oil business clearly shows one thing: whoever defends industrial mass society defends mass destruction.
>From "Contro la loro Guerra, contro la loro pace" ("Against their war, against their peace"), n. 1 - Trieste, 19 March 2003


---------------------------------
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.


--- StripMime Warning --  MIME attachments removed ---
This message may have contained attachments which were removed.

Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list.

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---