Click on the title to link to a guest commentary on the current struggle in Iran from the "Renegade Eye" blog.
Markin comment:
The situation in Iran cries out to high heaven for a communist solution. Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution is fully applicable here. However, there is no vanguard party to lead this struggle so the question of what we get in the short term, other than the removal of the current regime, is rather problematic. All we can say for sure today, as we have for the past 30 odd years is- Down With The Mullahs! Fight For A Revolutionary Constituent Assembly! No political support for any bourgeois parties or politicians! Defend the Iranian peoples! Hands Off The Protesters! World Imperialism Hands Off Iran!
More, much more on this as events continue to unfold.
In the 1970s, I remember reading Spartacist material on Iran. It influenced me.
ReplyDeleteRemember the SWP line of religious in form, and revolutionary in essence. That was misleading.
Even a bourgoise democratic, secular government, could have great ramifications. In the long run it wouldn't work, and socialism would be needed.
Ren- Good comments.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember the SWP line that you mentioned in your comment. I believe others, like the International Socialists, also had a variation on the line. In short-support the mullahs because they were the biggest game in town against the Shah. (The IS may still have that approach if you look at their "Arab Revolution" stuff.) Many an Iranian worker militant, leftist, communist, or even democratic secularist paid with his or her life pursuing that line. The SWP/IS-types just walked away to the next "big thing".
Obviously, even a democratic, secular Iran would, given the upheaval needed to create such a structure, be a step in the right direction. However, our business as communists, especially those of us who stad under the banner of the theory of permanent revolution, is not merely to fight for that kind of structure but for a communist solution. That, my friend, is what we are in the communist propaganda business for. That is also the import of the "fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly' slogan I mentioned in my comment on your blog. To cut across an outcome of an Iran, just without the mullahs. In short, the same old "crap".
Finally, the situation in Iran as it has heated up over the past week or so has had me scurrying back to my files to read a few old pieces of Spartacist stuff on Iran from the late 1970s. It still reads like a pretty good sense of what our axis should be these days. Especially that "break with the mullahs" part that was their signature in those days.
I went to the International Communist League site to find more stuff but didn't see anything posted from that early period.