Contributed in 29th May 2018 for the internal debate
Iran,
nationalism and imperialism Half way correct The debate on the questions of Iran, nationalism and imperialism started
after the military coups in Egypt and Turkey, in 2013 and 2016 respectively.
Tom et al have argued that the iSt’s neutralist position in 1979, “Down with the
Shah, Down with the Mullahs”, should apply to Egypt and Turkey as well. From
the point of view of the political components, Egypt and Turkey’s situations in
2013 and 2016 were quite similar to that of Iran in 1979, so that might be formally
logical and consistent, but that position is tactically incompetent and ultra
leftist. Therefore the question of Iran becomes practical and contemporary. We
studied the question and concluded that the iSt’s position on Iran in 1979 and its
application to Egypt and Turkey reflects only one face of the strategic
principle. It is a tactically inept position, which would have led us to
disastrous defeat. We should have taken the side of the anti-Shah struggle, in
which the radical part the Islamists involved along with the working people,
without giving any political support to the Islamicists, while politically
preparing the overthrow of the radical Mullahs. That’s the position we have
learned from Trotsky who clearly crystallized it, especially in his “On the
Sino-Japanese War” and “Ultra Lefts in General and Incurable Ultra Lefts in
Particular”. In our study on the question we have found that the IBT and the iSt
tradition have much too frequently taken that kind of neutralism in cases of imperialist
aggression against colonies of the US. Besides Tom et al’s argument on Egypt
and Turkey, neutralism on the maneuvers to change the disobedient colonial
regimes by imperialism in Libya, Ukraine and Syria are recent examples.
Defining actions against regimes when the imperialists are acting through domestic
forces as merely civil war, and taking the side of the targeted regimes only
when the imperialists are involved directly in combat is not revolutionary.
This is at best humanist but it abandons Leninism on the national question.
That position wastes critical time, failing to take practical measures to
defend the victim of imperialist aggression at the outset, while making claims
to be anti-imperialist. It takes the side of the imperialists’ target at a time
when support is useless. And it pretends to be anti-imperialist. Perhaps that
might be better than the IS’s position which describes the imperialist proxy
forces as “revolutionary”, but practically it is also in the service of
imperialism. The hint from the exchange with the ICL The ICL’s “The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra” gives a useful hint
to us on where the frequent neutralism on imperialist involvements found in the
iSt tradition comes from: “Despite all his efforts, part of the American
leadership developed a chauvinist, anti-internationalist line, opposing
national liberation struggles in multinational states.” This article shows the
likely root of the apologist positions on imperialism, involving an extremely weird
attitude of the iSt’s maximus leader. According to the ICL’s Hydra document and our two articles criticizing
it, the iSt was already a nasty racist organization at the time that we
describe it as a “revolutionary organization.” The leader’s racist rhetoric had
been accepted without any significant internal struggle. Even when there was an
acute appeal against his nasty words from the other leftists, the iSt just
ignored this language and kept silence. There was no internal resistance
neither. This was very different to the attitude of Lenin and Trotsky against
Stalin’s Great Russianism. Stalin showed bureaucratic arrogance with filthy
words against minor nationalities and ordered the Georgians to join the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, labeling the resisting Georgian
Bolsheviks as “socialist nationalists.” Lenin and Trotsky were provoked to a
life and death fight against this. But some comrades say that ‘even though the
main leadership of the iSt were racist and there was no serious resistance
against it internally, the iSt then championed the national question. The
national position devised at the time was revolutionary.’ Of course, we cannot
exclude that kind of possibility even though it is very unlikely. But it is
quite similar argument that ‘Stalin was the champion on the national question
even though he was Great Russian chauvinist,’ Imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism After the Second World War, the struggles for national liberation were
intensified by two causes. One is the growth of the working class in the colonies
as a result of capitalization initiated by imperialism. The other is the
weakening of the former imperialist powers in the colonies by all out war
between the imperialists. The growth of the working class has made direct
imperialist rule difficult. Direct rule by foreign imperialists exposed the
stark division of society before the working people. So ways to rule the
colonies have changed from direct to indirect rule, using the indigenous ruling
elites and comprador capitalists as domestic imperialist agents, to avoid
direct and fierce struggles against imperialism. Some of the struggles for national liberation have succeeded in overthrowing
imperialist agent regimes. And among them, some countries have become workers
states with the help of the Soviet Union. Therefore, imperialist aggression has occurred, mainly against two kinds
of places, degenerated/deformed workers states and the semi-colonies that were politically
liberated after national liberation. Lenin described this phenomenon: “Of course, finance capital finds most ‘convenient’, and derives the
greatest profit from, a form of subjection which involves the loss of the
political independence of the subjected countries and peoples. In this respect,
the semi-colonial countries provide a typical example of the ‘middle stage’. It
is natural that the struggle for these semidependent countries should have
become particularly bitter in the epoch of finance capital, when the rest of
the world has already been divided up.” So when the colonial regimes are not sufficiently obedient to
imperialism for whatever reasons and they have become the obstacles to maximize
their profit and interest, imperialists have tried ‘regime change.’
Assassination, military coup, proxy civil war and direct invasion etc have
typically been used to do it. Neutralism against Imperialism and Iran The iSt tradition has defined imperialist ‘regime change,’ as only
‘civil war’ when the forces involved were only domestic. In these cases the iSt
tradition holds that the imperialist factor is not decisive and we should not
take sides, covering this with superficially Leninist but ultra leftist
rhetoric. By taking the side of the targeted regime only in the last stage of
the imperialist operation to change the regime (after failing to take a side in
the decisive conflict) this tactic reveals itself as useless in fighting
against imperialism and betrays the Leninist duty to support the struggle for
national liberation. The 1979 abstention in the working people’s struggle against the US
proxy Shah in Iran, was one of the vivid examples which has bent our
revolutionary politics toward imperialist opportunism. Some comrades argue that
the Shah and the Islamic regime, which was the result of a combination of the
Iranian working people struggling against imperialism and the political victory
of the reactionary Islamists, are the same. Or they even see the latter as worse
than the former -- which is an astonishing argument to us. We argue that post-Shah Iran is much better than the Shah’s regime in
the international relationship of forces between imperialism and the working
class. We stand for the defence of post-Shah Iran in the impending imperialist
aggression to restore a pro-imperialist regime, while we give no political
support to the regime and preparing its overthrow and the building of a workers’
state. We need to go back to Lenin’s Marxism.