I recognize my obligation to show the progressive conseqiuences of the Iranian revolution

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am sending this in -- a slightly edited version of a letter I sent
to Tom O'Lincoln -- because it may be a while before I submit anything
more to this debate. It occurred to me that I should let the list know
of my response to Tom's perfectly appropriate question, which I really
could not answer in concrete, specific terms, though I know some
general facts that support my view. I realized after sending it that
it really belonged on the list, despite my saying the opposite to Tom.

I jumped into this debate fearless but unprepared.  Something about
Bolton's highlighting the danger of the threat of "intellectual
capacity" weapons in the Middle East set me off about the importance
of defending the conquests of the Iranian revolution.  One of those
conquests, in my opinion, has been a rather massive increase in the
supply of this deadly weapon across the population.

And I want to take this opportunity to make one more point.  I was
opposed to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and I am opposed the
very different, but still unhdemocratic and anti=working-class Islamic
Republic that governs Iran,  although I have to note that this is a
much less closed and totalitarian setup than the one that eventually
succeeded in strangling stifling the resistance to the invasion of
Iraq -- reflecting the fact that the ruling class there has been
somewhatless successful than in Iraq in carrying out a thoroughgoing
bourgeois counterrevolution.

I also don't favor an Islamic Republic for Iraq, although I firmly
support the self-determination of the people of Iraq, including their
right to establish such a regime. But nothing that has happened from
the Iranian revolution on has shaken my conviction that mullah-phobia
and Islam-phobia are obstacles to taking a revolutionary stand on the
Iranian revolution, the current resistance to the US occupation in
Iraq, and even to the fight against the US occupation of Afghanistan
and the struggle there to get back on the road of the revolutionary
process that began there in 1978 and ended in defeat.
Fred Feldman

Dear Tom,
I just want to acknowledge your request for more information about
women in Iran.  I know wome things in general -- the broadly expanded
role of women in industry, government, political life, the
universities, education, military training in general and so forth.
But I do not have the details.

I decided to throw down on Iran because it seems, though it is not
certain, that Iran is, so far, the country that is being treated as
the next target, possibly because they are beginning to realize that
Iraq may be hard to stabilize without doing the same to Iran.  On the
other hand, I think it is still very possible that they will invade
Syria, which has a better chance of being a short, low-casualty war.
But Syria is less strategic than either Iran or Iraq, although an
easier and therefore more tempting target.

I feel that antiwar forces, and the left in particular, are poorly
prepared to defend Iran because they know nothing of the Iranian
revolution that produced this regime and its contradictions.  And I
expect the Mujahideen types to become very active in these issues in
this country as war approaches.  And their Marxoid lingo makes them
hard for leftists to recognize them as gusanos of a special type
against an important  revolution of a much more limited type than the
Cuban.

Thanks for noticing Phil's misrepresentation of my opinion.  Frankly,
I may have been guilty in my heart of baiting Phil by commenting on
Cindy Jaquith's, in my opinion, excellent journalism on Iran. After
all,  I know from experience that when the issue of the SWP and Barnes
comes up, Phil loses all concern for accurate representation of the
opinions of others.    In the fight against the First Evil, as they
say on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, anything goes.

But the issue of Iran is just a tiny bit more important than the issue
of the SWP.  So I don't think that revealing the fact that Phillip is
distorting what I said, without revealing anything new about Iran,
would serve any useful purpose. Of course, I never said that the
regime has created
"pretty good" conditions for women, workers in general, youth, or
anyone outside the layer of capitalists and related government
bureaucrats they represent.

The fact is that even the most successful bourgeois-democratic
revolutions don't do that, and that is not part of their function,
unless they lead to socialist revolutions. That's part of what
requires the workers to take up the unfinished democratic revolution
as part of moving on to the socialist revolution.

I also notice that noone has commented on my characterization of the
Mujahideen.  Do they represent a relatively progressive alternative to
the Iranian regime?

Perhaps everyone recognizes the opposite.  That the Mujahideen have
become bought and paid for mercenaries, not revolutionaries of any
kind. ut if that is recognized, antiwar fighters in many cities had
better start preparing to politically answer this outfit, unless it
has disappeared, which is not my impression.

I think there is more confusion about Iran than there ever was about
Iraq, and that even more lies have been internalized in the US
population. The antiwar movement and the left faces a difficult
challenge if the rulers decide in the coming months that Iran can
really be taken, which I am not sure they will -- basically for the
same reasons (with the vastly different proportions guarded, of
course), they have decided that Cuba is not at the top of their list
of targets.

I believe that Iran is one of those countries  that,  as a young woman
member of the Cuban delegation to the UN said recently about her own
country, "can be occupied, but can never be pacified."  And I think
the Iranian revolution is a big part of the reason for that.

But I do have the obligation to try to show, not that eveyone is doing
great and Iran is a democratic paradise, but that the social relations
have been changed in a historically progressive way, in contrast to
those who argue that they have been thrown back by "Islamic reaction.

I do know for a fact about advances of women, but it is a fact that I
cannot prove it with citations of statistics and so forth.  And I
admit to having a responsibility to do so.  So that is a project I am
duty bound to undertake. And I also need to show more about the
advances politically (not in living standards for workers, which are
declining as they are all over the world) for the working class.

You can submit this answer to the list as you wish, as a response to
your request for more information.  I'm not submitting it because I
have realized my specific factual  knowledge falls far short of what
needs to be either demonstrated or disproved to reply to your request
or to meet the broader challenge to demonstrate or disprove that the
revolution that overthrew the shah and led to the current bourgeois
regime was in fact a progressive event in world history, and one that
still lives in the social relations and, to the imperialists,
threatening "intellectual capacity" of the Iranian people today.

Fred