[Marxism] Comment: A question to the left on Iran: Can the people make history or not? | Links

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

By *Mike Ely *

June 19, 2009 -- There is a self-deceptive politics (among some
leftists) that seeks to prettify all kinds of reactionary forces that
(for one reason or another) are in opposition to US imperialism —
including Islamic reactionaries, Kim Jung Il, “hardline” revisionists of
the Li Peng and Eric Honecker type and so on. And in the process they
have a real, almost startling, hostility toward sections of the people
who rise up in important if still-inarticulate ways.

My sense is that such politics arise from a despair over actually
developing our own revolutionary forces — and a resigned assumption that
we have no other alternative but to fall behind any forces (ugly,
oppressive, reactionary or not) who (one way or another) who seem to be
on the United States' shit list.

This is not a uni-polar world with only one defining contradiction. Yes,
we understand (and must understand) that the US acts as a central pillar
of world capitalism … but it is hardly the only pillar or the only
reactionary force.

As someone who remembers this Iranian regime murdering our comrades and
drenching the people in blood, it is hard not have a far more nuanced
sense of such events. I remember so vividly attending parties of
celebration with our Iranian communist comrades, from the Iranian
Student Association (ISA) at colleges in the US, as they went back to
Iran (in 1979) to dive into the revolution — so full of hopes and energy.

And I know now, with real sadness that has never gone away, that many of
them ended up in the prisons and torture cells of Khomenei, or were
wasted on the frontlines of the war with Iraq.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1112

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