Mass Demonstrations in Iran: "Tanks, bullets, guards, nothing can stop us!"

It is difficult to agree with the speculations about Iran in your article. How could you compare the Greek, French and Egyiptian cases which were either mostly or clearly working class struggles with the "people's" struggle of Iran? I think there is no relation since second seems to be a reflection of decomposition of Burgeoisie state and nothing else.

You are reporting "down to the dictator" slogan but not "Allahuekber". So this seems to be a mere speculation and empty talk about the situation in Iran without enough objective basis on the contemporary situation...

The situation now in Iran is a welcome development. But we should be cautious in our analysis, especially on the question of whether the Iranian workers is developing an independent movement or whether their actions "serve" the interest of the bourgeois opposition.

Nevertheless, it is worth for close monitoring for the left-communists and perhaps for a possible intervention.

I think that the article is extremly cautious. It says clearly that even though there maybe workers struggling as individuals that the working class is not struggling as a class. It should be remembered when comparing these sort of struggles that the events in Greece did not start as a workers' struggle either. Nor in fact did the events that led to the mass strike in France in 1968. Also we should remember that struggles that begin as workers' struggles can also be turned into tools in ruling class faction fights as we have seen during recent struggles in lebanon and Palestine.
The article reflects the neccesary caution, but also puts forward the communist perspective that only the working class acting in its own interests can be a decisive force in changing society.
Of course some points in the article are 'speculative', but it does serve to lay down the basis of a communist perspective on the struggles and begin to develop a discussion on the nature and perspectives of this movement.
Devrim

june 18, 2009

1. Iranian workers: elect workers' councils in every workplace, shop, plant, factory, office!

2. Iranian rank-and-file soldiers, Iranian rank-and-file sailors: break from the military brass! elect soldiers' councils and sailors' councils in every military installation!

3. Iranian farm workers: elect farm workers' councils on every plantation, capitalist farm!

4. Iranian workers, farm workers, soldiers, sailors: form a revolutionary workers' party aiming at mobilizing the power and energy of the working classes of iran to take all state power, smash the old Iranian capitalist and bosses' state, and establish a state comprised of elected and armed workers' councils, farm workers' councils, soldiers' councils, sailors' councils!

5. Iranian rank-and-file soldiers, Iranian rank-and-file sailors: liberate the guns whereever they are, and distribute them to the masses of the working class people of iran! arms to the masses of the workers, farm workers! disarm the bourgeois cops, the old capitalist bosses' armed state! form workers' militias of rank-and-file workers, rank-and-file farm workers, rank and file armed soldiers, rank-and-file sailors! rank-and-file soldiers, rank-and-file sailors: turn your guns the other way, against your Iranian theocratic capitalistic masters, bosses, parasitic clerical filth!

6. Smash the theocratic power of the clergy! for a secular proletarian dictatorship of the working classes, soldiers, sailors, made up of elected councils of workers, farm workers, soldiers, sailors! not one penny to support of the clergy, parasites off the people! for the liberation of women, for the liberation of homosexuals, for the liberation of the people of iran from theocracy, and for a secular proletarian dictatorship of the producing classes -- the working classes -- comprised of elected councils of workers, farm workers, soldiers, sailors!

7. For a revolutionary proletarian communist iran with a revolutionary proletarian communist internationalist foreign policy of spreading proletarian communist revolution to every country on earth!

8. Workers of iran, workers of the world, unite! you have nothing to lose but your chains and a world to win!

--June 18, 2009
thursday

I SHOULD HAVE ADDED AS MY POINT AT THE START OF MY PROPOSALS TO THE IRANIAN WORKING CLASSES:

U.S. IMPERIALISM, HANDS OFF IRAN! IN THE EVENT OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST IRAN, NO MATTER WHO IS IN POWER IN IRAN: FOR THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM BY IRAN AND THE SMASHING OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION, INVASION, OR ATTACK ON IRAN BY IRAN!

--ALLAN

Allan, your original 'demands' were good enough before you added to them this cheerleeding for the weaker imperialism. It's amazing how so many Trotskyists will sit and denounce this or that barbaric capitalist regime, but will then call for their unconditional defense once a larger power threatens them. It would seem that The Sparts (which you are alligned with) are particularly obsessed with this notion. The only Spart booth I've ever seen had big signs proclaiming their unconditional support for China in the event of an American attack. In that case as well as with your proclamation calling for workers to sacrifice themselves for the Iranian state, military intervention seems so unlikely that the proverbial shouting of these demands seems rather out of place until you realize that defense for sundry bourgeoise regimes is one of the central features of Trotskyism.

And _if_ Iran is attacked, revolutionary defeatism is the only revoltuionary course of action!

Neither Ahmadinejad nor Mosavi
Long live class struggle

After the election circus, Ahmadinejad was presented as winner and this resulted in political confrontation and crisis between bourgeois gangs. The leader of one rival, Mosavi would not accept the result and mobilize protestors throughout the entire country which resulted in some demonstrators got wounded or killed. The fact is that in our epoch, in the epoch of decadent capitalism, parliament and elections are not than a mystification and the main task of parliament is, legislate wage slavery.

Mosavi, with his green flag, presented himself as a reformist. What does it means to be reformist? It was during Mosavi’s time as a Prime Minster that hundreds of striking worker jailed or were beaten to death. Thousands of political prisoners were executed when Mosavi was Prime Minster. Mass grave of political prisoners (Khavaran) was created when Mosavi was Prime Minster. This list can be very long. Mosavi is not less guilty than Ahmadinejad when it comes to workers right or other human right issues.

The green movement does not belong to workers and it belongs to a rival of bourgeois. We must avoid acting as canon fodder for any of the struggling bourgeois gangs. Instead of green flag, we must raise our flag, the flag of proletariat and the red flag.

Capitalism is the origin of all misery and adversity in the world. Capitalism means, a real hell, not only for working class but also for all humanity. We must never forget that capitalist democracy and capitalist dictatorship are two sides of the same coin. Where the Goddess of Freedom stands, thousands of workers are unemployed and homeless. In the paradise of capitalism, where the social democratic governments have been in place for more than hundred years, unemployment has been a nightmare for working class.

The future of our movement only depends on our struggle. We must expand our struggle, independent of all bourgeois gangs, against capitalism. Our slogan must be against wage slavery, exploitation, unemployment, inflation and we must spread our struggle from streets to workplaces in all sectors and if it is possible to other countries as well. Internationalist positions are very weak in Iran and its militants very isolated. We must try to break down this isolation and establish connection and collaboration with other internationalists throughout the world.

The working class is the only social class that can put an end to capitalist barbarism and misery. This alternative that communists had proposed in the past is more valid today than ever:
“Communist revolution or the destruction of humanity!”

19 June 2009
Internationalist

June 21, 2009
Sunday

Micah's lying diatribe neatly slips into his post the lie that I am "aligned" with the Spartacists, which is a lie. I've publicly stated numerous times on various sites of the International Communist Current that I am organizationally non-affiliated, and have been since 1976, when I resigned from the Spartacists, and, additionally, I've stated numerous times that since about 2005, I've been seriously investigating left communist writings, both of the International Communist Current and International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, as well as investigating writings from left communists in the tradition of left communism -- Amadeo Bordiga, Paul Mattick, Anton Pannekoek, and other left communists. Public lying of the sort in which Micah engages is no way of discussing issues.

Now, to the point of Micah's lying diatribe, my call for U.S. hands off Iran and, in the event of any United States military confrontation with or attack against Iran, my favoring the military defeat of U.S. imperialism. I make that statement from within what in the 1960s radical New Left, some of us used to call the "belly of the imperialist beast," the U.S. I don't make it from within Iran, where it is quite popular among all factions, I would suspect. So for a liar like Micah to ascribe my viewpoint to some kind of "adaptation" to imperialism is simply a lying slur on my revolutionary, and communist internationalist honor.

Secondly, the real issue in my view is, was Lenin right when he suggested that in imperialist war, the defeat of "one's own" bourgeoisie or "one's own" capitalist bourgeois government was the lesser evil? That's the real issue. Lenin wrote a book entitled, "Socialism and War," and he wrote it in the middle of the First inter-imperialist World War, in around 1915 or 1916, as I recall. In that book, he suggested to revolutionaries of all countries that they preach IN THE TRENCHES the line that the defeat of one's own country was the lesser evil. That line came in the communist movement to be called, revolutionary defeatism. Indeed, Lenin's viewpoint among revolutionaries was considered to be the FAR LEFT-WING EVEN within the relatively small nucleus of internationalist communists who had broken from the social-chauvinist and social-patriotic nationalist and great imperialist chauvinism of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International. When internationalists met at Zimmerwald, for instance, Lenin's position was the far left-wing at that conference. My view of "revolutionary defeatism" is quite in accord with Lenin's view.

But thirdly, there is additionally the view Lenin held, to which I also subscribe, that in specifically COLONIALISTIC and IMPERIALISTIC WARS for the imperialistic domination by BIG imperialist powers over what Lenin consistently referred to as SMALL COUNTRIES, revolutionaries ought to SIDE WITH THE SMALLER COUNTRIES. My view is quite in accord with Lenin's view on THAT question as WELL.

It is convenient, I know, for allegedly "left" alleged "communists" like Micah to refer to my positions in a fashion that neatly exploits the loss of historical memory of many thousands of militants worldwide regarding the early history of the internationalist communist movement. But that exploitation of the loss of historical memory by lying demagogues like Micah cannot eliminate from the facts of history that our forebears, such as Lenin himself, were the originators of the positions I've taken here.

To those who don't know this, I would refer them to Lenin's book, "Socialism and War." There is a website called, www.marx.org. If you go to that website, click on "Selected Marxist Writers," or else, simply look for the picture of Lenin, and click on his picture. What will come up if you click on "Selected Marxist Writers" is, a list, and if you scroll down the list to Lenin's name, highlight his name and click. When Lenin's writings come up, you will have the option of selecting either his "Selected" or "Collected" works. I do not recall whether his works from the period of World War One (1914-1918) are all contained in the "Selected" works, and so, I would tentatively suggest you go to his "Collected" works. This will require some work. You will have to scroll down. Lenin wrote a number of pertinent works specifically relating to the issues we're debating here, but his main works include that book, "Socialism and War," a very interesting and eye-opening work for militants who are unacquainted with it. I suggest reading it, and reading it carefully.

Thank you.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

June 21, 2009
Sunday

Further Remarks on My Own Post Entitled: Micah's Lying Diatribe

Oh, yeah, I should have added this.

Micah in his post suggests I am supporting a "weaker imperialism" by my defense of Iran against any military attack by U.S. imperialism or any military confrontation against Iran instigated by U.S. imperialism.

Micah suggests this in a site in which appears a post by a courageous Iranian internationalist communist, who apparently has sent this gutsy and courageous post not only to the ICC's site, but to the IBRP's site (I checked the IBRP's site, and noticed it was there as well).

Now, I live in America. The American imperialist bosses' government -- the dictatorship of the imperialist capitalist bosses in my country of America -- or, rather, a significant faction of them, are presently chomping at the bit to turn this into a military confrontation of the major military and imperialist power on earth, the ruling class of the United States of America, against Iran.

Idiotically, Micah is suggesting that my call in the event that the ruling class of the country in which I live were to get that goal of a military confrontation fulfilled is a "wrong" call.

But BOTH Lenin AND Rosa Luxemburg ESSENTIALLY, AND IN DE FACTO TERMS IN THE CASE OF LUXEMBURG, AND MORE EXPLICIT TERMS IN THE CASE OF V.I. LENIN, HELD THAT THE JOB OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN "GREAT IMPERIALIST" POWERS IS TO SEEK TO MOBILIZE IN CLASS WAR AGAINST "THEIR OWN" IMPERIALIST CAPITALIST GOVERNMENTS AND BOSSES WHEN SUCH IMPERIALIST CAPITALIST GOVERNMENTS SOUGHT TO MAKE IMPERIALIST COLONIALIST WARS AGAINST WEAKER POWERS. NEITHER Rosa Luxemburg NOR V. I. Lenin would have held to the view that a weaker capitalist power such as Iran, with a long history of having been imperialistically and colonialistically dominated over by BIGGER imperialist and colonialist powers, should be seen as "on a par" with the GREATER imperialistic and colonialistic power.

In this situation, the United States of America is the MAIN ENEMY OF THE WORKING AND TOILING AND EXPLOITED AND OPPRESSED MASSES OF THE EARTH, and it IS IN THE CLASS INTERESTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT, IF THE U.S. MILITARILY ATTACKS IRAN, FOR THE U.S. TO BE DEFEATED.

It is also important to note that EVEN ROSA LUXEMBURG'S POSITION ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN NO WAY CORRESPONDED WITH THE SORT OF POSITION IMPLIED IN MICAH'S POST.

Rosa Luxemburg participated in the revolutionary and communist movements of SEVERAL capitalist countries, INCLUDING nationally oppressed POLAND, where she grew up, and SUBSEQUENTLY in IMPERIALISTIC GERMANY, where she participated as the far left-winger for many years in the German Social-Democratic Party, till World War One, when she broke openly, publicly, decisively, with the German Social-Democratic Party over the War, taking a revolutionary internationalist position.

But EVEN in the period when Rosa Luxemburg, and V. I. Lenin, engaged in serious disagreement and debate over the question of the slogan of the right of Poland to national self-determination, a slogan Lenin militantly defended (and Lenin was a Russian from Russia who, at the time, was the imperialistic oppressor of Poland, so Lenin, someone of a "Great Russian" background, was saying, those of us from a "Great Russian" background must be particularly attentive in opposing the "Great Russian" imperialistic, nationalistic, racist chauvinism of "our own" nationality against peoples and nations oppressed by the government of "our own" nationality), Rosa Luxemburg's position was UNCOMPROMISING IN ITS DEFENSE BY CLASS WAR MEANS of the national rights of ALL OPPRESSED NATIONALITIES AND PEOPLES AND NATIONS. EVEN when Rosa wrote "The National Question and Autonomy," she at NO TIME made ANY CONCESSIONS TO the IMPERIALISTIC NATIONALISTIC CHAUVINISM of "GREAT IMPERIALISTIC NATIONALISTIC CHAUVINISTIC" OPPRESSORS OF SMALLER COUNTRIES AND NATIONS AND PEOPLES. NEVER.

So in this, Micah seems to take a side that is an insult to BOTH the communist internationalist revolutionary honor of BOTH comrade Rosa Luxemburg AND comrade Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

I think Lenin was ESPECIALLY RIGHT on this issue of the REVOLUTIONARY RESPONSIBILITY OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN THE "GREAT IMPERIALIST" COUNTRIES, and today, there is no more militarily powerful and imperialist country than the U.S.A. And any revolutionary with half a brain ought to realize that, in a military confrontation of U.S. imperialism with Iran, the U.S. imperialists with their high-tech military weaponry have the deck of cards rigged in their favor. ANY concession in a situation in which a MAJOR faction of the U.S. imperialist capitalist ruling bourgeois class IS, INDEED, CHOMPING AT THE BIT to get involved and turn this into a U.S. MILITARY ATTACK AGAINST IRAN would be a BETRAYAL OF THOSE IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISTS LIKE THE COURAGEOUS INTERNATIONALIST WHO SENT THE POST TO THIS SITE.

Ahmadinejad and Khameini would like NOTHING BETTER than to be able to say, the United States is the main instigator of ANY DISSENT in Iran.

To those who say, well, you've got the "party line" of the OTHER main American bourgeois capitalist imperialist faction, that led by Obama, I would have to answer this: Obama has, in the past week, been MOVING IN THE DIRECTION OF THE HARD-RIGHT AMERICAN REPUBLICAN PARTY FACTION WHO ARE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO TURN THIS INTO SOME KIND OF U.S. IMPERIALIST CONFRONTATION WITH IRAN. The American Republican Party just GOT PASSED IN THE U.S. NATIONAL LEGISLATURE, the Congress, WITH THE SUPPORT OF OBAMA'S PARTY, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, a resolution condemning the Iranian government.

I publicly ask Micah, WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK THAT SIGNIFIES, MICAH, IF IT SIGNIFIES ANYTHING OTHER THAN A DETERMINATION OF THE U.S. IMPERIALIST REGIME -- WHO, IN 1953, REMEMBER, THROUGH THE U.S. GANG OF ASSASSINS CALLED, THE CIA, HELPED TOPPLE THE IRANIAN MOSSADEQ REGIME AFTER THEY HAD BEEN ELECTED IN A BOURGEOIS ELECTION BECAUSE MOSSADEQ NATIONALIZED AMERICAN OIL COMPANIES IN IRAN -- TO BECOME INVOLVED ON SOME LEVEL in what is going on inside Iran?

In THIS SITUATION ESPECIALLY, it is IMPERATIVE on internationalist communist revolutionaries to SIMULTANEOUSLY make the kind of call that internationalist communist from Iran made -- that ONLY the communist revolution is the road forward for all humanity -- while SIMULTANEOUSLY calling for U.S. HANDS OFF IRAN AND, IN THE EVENT OF A MILITARY ATTACK BY THE U.S. ON IRAN, THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM BY IRAN NO MATTER WHO IS IN POWER IN IRAN.

NOTHING LESS than that position suffices for being a TRULY AND AUTHENTICALLY COMMUNIST, INTERNATIONALIST, AND REVOLUTIONARY POSITION IN THE AUTHENTIC TRADITIONS OF BOTH comrade Rosa Luxemburg AND comrade Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, NOTHING less.

For the World Communist Proletarian
Revolution! Workers of All Countries,
Unite!

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

June 21, 2009
Sunday

Again regarding Micah's lie about me:

Here a link to a post I did on the ICC's website providing a sense of my position on the Spartacists and, indeed, all organized Trotskyism internationally. Anyone who reads my post at this link cannot conclude, as the liar, Micah, has, that I am "aligned with" the Spartacists:

http://en.internationalism.org/inter/148/lessons-60s#comment-529

But, comrades, you know, I still possess admiration and respect for what comrade TROTSKY wrote when he wrote, "The truth is revolutionary."

Therefore: WHAT does THAT SAY about the politics of someone like MICAH who LIES?

Think about that a little bit, will you, please?

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

I will try to comment on the debate between Allan and Micah when I have had more time to read it. But the post by Internationalist could be something really important.

Comrade Internationalist - you are more than welcome! Are there others with you? We are eager to know more, even though we understand that you need to be cautious in your answers and you may prefer to contact us through other channels.

Have you posted your statement to www.libcom.org - an internationalist discussion forum, even if dominated by anarchism? Other forums are also widely used for discussion among internationalists, in particular www.revleft.org. There is a specific forum for left communists there.

First, we need to discuss this calmly without throwing out too many accusations. Allan: Micah is formally incorrect to say that you are aligned with the Spartacists in any organisational sense. I understand that you are making a serious attempt to break with your Trotskyist past and engage with the communist left. However, judging by both your posts here, you are still very much carrying the political weight of your Trotskyist past.

Micah is quite generous about your first post with the slogans calling for the immediate formation of workers' councils and the dictatorship of the proletariat. That's because in themselves, the slogans are not wrong and might well be appropriate at a certain moment of extremely advanced and politicised class struggle. But even if we can discern the embryo of a proletarian response in Iran today, it faces immense obstacles, posed by the enormity of democratic illusions and the danger of being mobilised for an inter-bourgeois conflict. To call for workers' councils at a moment when we are still only seeing signs of an independent class movement is dangerous because it bears no relationship to the actual level of consciousness in the class. Furthermore, it still expresses the Trotskyist attitude to class consciousness as something that has no autonomous development and needs to be injected from the outside by discovering the correct demands and slogans. Though you may still see this as a 'Leninist' approach, it actually bears little relation to the way in which Lenin related to the development of revolutionary consciousness in the Russian proletariat in 1905 and 1917.

However, the problems posed in your first post are secondary compared to the ones raised by the second. Here there is a fundamental difference between the positions you defend and the tradition of the communist left, which does indeed consider that Lenin's view of supporting 'colonial wars' has been definitively proved false by the evidence of proletarian experience in the 20th century. When you say

"U.S. IMPERIALISM, HANDS OFF IRAN! IN THE EVENT OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST IRAN, NO MATTER WHO IS IN POWER IN IRAN: FOR THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM BY IRAN AND THE SMASHING OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION, INVASION, OR ATTACK ON IRAN BY IRAN!"

Then you are indeed lining up with the Trotskyists against the position of the communist left, and, we would argue, against the real spirit of Lenin's internationalism in 1914-17, when he consistently opposed both imperialist camps. Therefore, apart from that one point mentioned earlier, Micah's criticisms of your position are, from the ICC's point of view, entirely valid.

I imagine in most cases their political consciousness isn't fully developed, but it seems most Iranians would agree that neither Ahmadinejad nor Mousavi hold the answers to problems for which the Islamic Republic itself is mostly responsible, and I doubt most Iranians would see any attraction in secular nationalism or in being dragged into the US sphere of influence, having been failed by both in the past and brutally and callously betrayed by the latter - ultimately, the complete abolition of capitalism is the only place left for the Iranian people to turn, even if they don't yet fully understand that capitalism is at the core of their oppression. If the mass movement succeeds, then its highly likely that the revolution will pass go along with it.

If the comments were posted in the order they were posted (first on top, second below etc) it would be easier to read.

I want to apologize to Allan for not sufficiently qualifying my comments about his connections to the Sparts. In a formal sense he may not be "aligned" with them. Nonetheless, as Anonymous points out, I think it's clear Allan is still heavily influenced by the ideology of Trotskyism in general and the the ideology of the Spartacists in particular, as seen by his comments on race in America, which match up with the peculiar notions of the Spartacists. Moreover, Allan has mentioned several times his ambivalence and misgivings about his break with the Sparts. For instance, in the comment he linked to in his present response to my "lies," he says "I still find myself agreeing with them pretty much on everything they write in terms of their program and theory." What's more, he entertains the possibility that not only may he have been wrong in his assessment of them, but that they may be "the only authentic communist party on the planet today." Given statements like this, forgive me if I refuse to backedal entirely on my "lying diatribe." (Histrionics much?)

All the same, I'm sorry.

Your spirited (if uncomradely) reply is appreciated, though I for one am completely unconvinced.

How is a military defeat for the United States a step forward for the proletariat anywhere? Even in the United States, the country which would be affected most by such a defeat, the American military is hardly a bulwark of the capitalist system. And in the remainder of the globe, where the working class is oppressed far more by all the other bourgeois states, how is America somehow the linchpin of the capitalist system? How did the global working class benefit from America's defeat in Vietnam? How has it benefited from the American military's current intractable situation in Iraq (aside from being spared further attacks)?

More importantly, how is the preservation of the Iranian state -- though coupled with a defeat of America -- somehow more beneficial than the resistance of the Iranian working class to all capitalist powers, theirs included? One only has to look back to the October Revolution to see an example of a proletariat in a "weaker" country refusing to abandon its own interests in order to defeat the stronger power. In doing so, the Russian working class may not have struck down the German military, but it inspired the proletariat across the world to march forward for the communist future. Which brings up another point: while some communists insisted on continuing the fight against the German military, it was made clear in 1914 that the enemy of the proletariat wasn't only the capitalist state but the "socialist" left as well.

These comments aren't stated very well and may be more empirical than theoretical, but whatever.

Anyhow, I look forward to the whatever Alf and others might have to say. And for your sake, Allan, I'll read Lenin's Socialism and War.

sorry, the post submitted at 21:24 was from me - I didn't intend to hide behind anonymity!
I welcome Micah's clarification and agree with the points he makes about Allan's positions.

-- Fixed by Admin --

The suggestion to reverse the order made sense. Most other blogs and forums have it this way round... :) ADMIN.

Comrade Alf

The ICC knows well Internationalist and the statement has been posted to the ICC too.

Communist greeting

June 23, 2009
Tuesday

Dear Alf:

First, on working class consciousness and when it's appropriate to suggest to the working people that they organize workers' councils.

In both the 1905 Russian Revolution, and in the 1917 March (February by the old calendar) Russian Revolution, the working people organized councils. The councils existed by the time the March (February) Revolution ended. In Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution," which your organization (I'm assuming you're with the ICC) doesn't repudiate or renounce, Trotsky put it this way: "Power fell into the street." In effect, by the end of the (quite short) March (February) 1917 Revolution, the working people had established councils, but side by side, the bourgeoisie had re-established a new bourgeois government. So in practical effect, there was a dual power.

In my view, the issue posed by the recent Iranian mass marches was, the smashing by the marches and protests of a long period of quiescence. In an historical moment in which there occurs the smashing of a long period of quiescence, it's incumbent on communists to intervene, not sit by passively.

I disagree with what you said about Lenin. At the historical moment of the March (February) Revolution, Lenin was still living in Switzerland, in exile, and was trying to figure a way of getting back to Russia. Lenin began his intervention in the Russian events from afar. Already -- from afar -- he posted to his comrades his perspective on the events.

It is absolutely right to say that Lenin tactically intersected the proletariat accounting for the heterogeneity of the proletariat's class consciousness. But it is precisely the heterogeneity of the proletariat's class consciousness which imperiously poses the objective necessity of honed, clear, thought-out slogans and a program. Go back and read "What Is To Be Done?" by Lenin. His entire perspective was to build a communist party to overcome the heterogeneity of the class's consciousness.

The smashing of the long period of quiescence in Iran by the recent week-long spate of huge mass protest marches only opened things up, but when there's an opening, communists should not sit by, but seek in whatever way is possible in such an objectively posed situation to pose objective necessity.

What is objective necessity in the Iranian situation, or what was it in the moment afforded communists in the past week? It was to pose in the opening afforded the necessity of the Iranian working class taking the entire struggle out of the internecine inter-bourgeois faction warfare by the setting up of workers' councils, and the disarming of the various bourgeois-theocratic gangs (Basij, misnamed "Revolutionary" Guards, bourgeois security cops, etc.) and the arming of the masses. So I put out there those slogans, as they accorded with objective necessity in that given historical moment. That's what Lenin sought to do even from afar, and even before he'd returned to Russia, in 1917. I was trying to copy what he did. I think I did a decent job.

Second, on my addition of U.S. imperialism, hands off Iran. The only mistake I made was not to add, British imperialism, hands off Iran, or, possibly, NATO imperialism, hands off Iran. But anybody in his or her right mind who does not think U.S. imperialism, British imperialism, NATO imperialism, may not seek to take advantage of the given Iranian situation to intervene either clandestinely or openly in some kind of military fashion is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. And in that given historical situation, it's the job of communists to call for the military defeat of imperialism.

In 1917, Russia was a kind of "sub"-imperialist power. Lenin had spent the years of World War One explaining in his book, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" about the interlocks of the diverse imperialist banks and corporations of the planet, and the division into factions of the global bourgeoisie that prefigured the inter-imperialist World War, and one of the countries he listed as an imperialist country was his own country, Russia.

But in 1917, everybody living in Russia knew damned well that the primary threat to the ongoing Russian Revolution (that is, the First or March a/k/a February, Revolution, the tumultuous events in the interim, then the Second or November a/k/a October, Revolution) was, the Allied imperialist powers of England, France, and the U.S., and one of the key factors providing effectiveness to Bolshevik propaganda and agitation in this period was its recognition that Anglo-French-American imperialisms sought to keep Russia involved in World War One, first of all, against the other imperialist powers, Germany and Austria, and, secondly, the last thing the capitalists of Anglo-French-American imperialisms wanted was, the revolutionary expropriation of the Russian capitalists, including the foreign capitalist interests of England, France, and America, by the Russian proletariat -- and this, of course, was precisely what the Bolsheviks were calling for. America, England, France, during the entire year 1917, were doing all in their power to insure the bourgeois government re-formed after the March a/k/a February Revolution remained intact and in power. So in de facto terms, the Russian proletariat was fighting both a revolutionary proletarian class war and, additionally, a kind of crypto-national liberation war liberating Russia herself from domination by the interests of Anglo-French-American imperialisms.

Now Russia was imperialist, and Lenin said that, and everybody knew that.

But there was pretty much in the Russian socialist movement, all wings of it, including by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the universal recognition that there was no comparison between the sort of "sub-imperialism" embodied in Russia at that historical moment in time, and, on the other hand, the old and powerful imperialist capitalist interests of Anglo-French-American imperialisms, which were far more militarily powerful and were major global imperialist powers.

It was in that context that the Bolsheviks' effective communist propaganda in 1917 was able to tap not only into growing and developing revolutionary proletarian class consciousness, but also into at least some Russian national consciousness sensitive to the fact of Russia's being historically sucked dry financially and economically by the world's major capitalist imperialist powers of that time, Anglo-French-American imperialisms, which were far and away the major imperialisms of that time.

I think in some sense, Iran is analogous to Russia in 1917, and therefore, it's appropriate for communists particularly in the countries of American and British and NATO imperialisms to call for "hands off Iran." I also think it's appropriate from the standpoint of Lenin's view that one must be the toughest opponent of the imperialistic chauvinism of "one's own" bourgeoisie, particularly in a situation in which "one's own" bourgeoisie is the most militarily powerful imperialist bourgeoisie in the world, U.S. capitalist imperialism. Lenin's entire fight on the national and colonial issue and the issue of nationalities throughout his political career was about winning the sympathy of the most oppressed sections of the toiling masses, particularly the most nationally oppressed, ethnically oppressed, racially oppressed, sexually oppressed, sections of the exploited working people, and part of the method of doing that, for Lenin, was for communists in the "home" or "mother countries" of capitalist imperialism (that is, in the most powerful of the imperialist countries) to come forward as the staunchest allies of the proletariats of the imperialistically oppressed and imperialistically dominated and colonialistically oppressed and colonialistically dominated portions of the exploited sections of the working classes of the world.

Now, I don't know what you think, but I do know that the Iranian proletariat is far and away more exploited historically than is the proletariat of North America, and, furthermore, I know that the bourgeoisie of North America is the most militarily powerful imperialism on earth. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate, and entirely in the spirit of Lenin, to raise the issue as one of U.S. imperialism, British imperialism, NATO imperialism, keeping their goddamned bloody imperialist hands off Iran, especially - especially, especially, especially -- in an historical moment when long years of internal quiescence have been at least momentarily shattered by vast mass street protests as has occurred in the past week or so.

That, at least, is how I view the question.

Finally, one more thing. This is an allusion to Rosa Luxemburg.

It is quite formally correct that Rosa Luxemburg and V. I. Lenin had a long history of political debate and difference over the issue of how to address the issue of oppressed nations. Rosa, for instance, though born in Poland and though she got her start as a revolutionary in Poland, never favored the slogan of the right of national self-determination for Poland, and argued in her booklet on the industrial development of Poland that in de facto effect, Poland had become so integrated into the Russian empire (the tsarist empire) that the very raising of the slogan of the right of national self-determination or of independence for Poland no longer made sense.

It is also on this question that she and Lenin often crossed swords at diverse conferences of socialists internationally.

But there was never in anything Rosa Luxemburg wrote any suggestion that Poland's people during the time tsarist Russia governed Poland was NOT a nationally oppressed people, NOT an oppressed nation oppressed by Great Russian imperialism. Again, earlier, I noted the Bolsheviks' 1917 slogans' effectiveness at least partly stemmed from the fact that, DESPITE Russia's being an imperialist power, Russia was a kind of "sub-imperialist" power compared with, that is, the truly great imperialist powers of the time, England, France, and the U.S. But that does not take away from the correctness of the fact Russia WAS an imperialist power, albeit a "sub-imperialist power" compared with England, France, and the U.S. brands of imperialism, and it does not take away from the fact Russia DID INDEED have a long history of dominating Poland. And NOWHERE did Rosa Luxemburg EVER SUGGEST the Polish nation was NOT an oppressed nation.

Rather, Rosa Luxemburg's approach to the question of the smashing of national oppression was to locate it within the broad nature of international 20th Century capitalism globally, and to draw or derive from her insight into that her slogans, which differed from those of Lenin's. In "The National Question and Autonomy," she in effect said that in the epoch of imperialism, or what the ICC comrades call the epoch of capitalist decadence, it no longer makes any sense to raise the call for the slogan of the right of nations to self-determination, because national rights are inextricably "mooted" or "nullified," if you will, by the objective facts of the internationalization of capital's domination.

But Lenin's approach was somewhat different. Basically, in Lenin's view, DESPITE the CORRECTNESS of Luxemburg's point that in the 20th Century, capital WAS, INDEED, INTERNATIONALLY DOMINANT, the national question PERPETUALLY AND REPEATEDLY RE-ASSERTS ITSELF IN INNUMERABLE MOMENTS AND INSTANCES. And on THAT insight of Lenin's, I simply don't see how anyone could disagree with Lenin on that.

Lenin's view was, AT SUCH MOMENTS when the national question in SOME FORM DOES re-assert itself, do communists pretend it's NOT re-asserting itself, or do we frankly acknowledge and admit that it IS re-asserting itself?

I can think of no issue in which the assertion of the national question of Iran and the Persian people would more likely play a central role than in a hypothetical instance in which, in a moment of mass protests of Iranians against the Iranian government, NATO, American, and British imperialisms might decided to militarily intervene against Iran.

That is precisely the reason I said, U.S. hands off Iran, and, again, my only mistake was, I should have also said, NATO imperialism, hands off Iran and British imperialism, hands off Iran.

IF the Iranian proletariat DOES eventually form workers' councils, don't you think, Alf, that in THAT INSTANCE, American, British, and NATO imperialisms will militarily involve themselves? Hell, RIGHT NOW, Obama's ALREADY responding to the more neo-conservative right-wing whackjob imperialist faction of the American bourgeoisie with more aggressive American imperialist rhetoric. The U.S. bourgeoisie's rulers are cynically using the deaths perpetrated against Iranian innocents to divert the interests of the masses from the long, long history of American and British imperialism's incursions into internal Iranian affairs over many, many, many decades.

THAT OBJECTIVELY MAKES NECESSARY communists of, ESPECIALLY, the BIG BOURGEOIS IMPERIALIST POWERS making clear our intransigent opposition to any American, British, or NATO imperialist intervention against Iran no matter WHO is in power.

And on that, I think my position is quite in accord with that of Lenin's, and that Lenin on that was right.

But I also think that, in spirit at least, my position also accords with how Rosa Luxemburg might have seen the issue today if she were alive -- despite the long history of political debate between her and Lenin on the issue of the national question.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

June 23, 2009
Tuesday

Dear Micah:

Apology accepted. My reason for responding in what you called an "uncomradely" fashion lay in the fact I've been pretty open on this site about my attitudes toward organized Trotskyism, including my history in the Spartacists in 1973-1976, and my history of defending their positions up to about 2005-2006, around which time I began making some fundamental revisions in my attitude toward them. I simply assumed you had seen or read some of these earlier posts of mine which I've posted on various ICC sites.

Now, then, on my positions on organized Trotskyism and left communism. I will try to provide my view at the present moment.

I am inclined to think the most politically powerful argument of left communists such as the ICC, IBRP, and other left communists, lies in the prophetic nature of left communists who detached themselves from the Third International early on in its development. I began in 2005-2006 reading "The Logan Regime," a 3-booklet publication of the Spartacists on a corrupt character named Bill Logan, then in the course of that realized two characters in the Spartacists at that time who'd conducted a kind of clandestine guerilla sniping war against me while I was in their party in 1973-1976 were two characters who, in Britain, in 1978, basically sought to whitewash Logan's regime in the British Spartacists, and that, furthermore, these two characters had been the ones who'd organized the tendency toward which I was pushed by James Robertson in 1973 at a moment when I independently of the faction of the International Socialists toward which he pushed me approached the Spartacists. This sounds irrelevant and impertinent and not of much concern, undoubtedly, to you comrades, but it began a process of making me ask questions about not just the Spartacists per se, but organized Trotskyism generally. Ironically, it's reading more and more books by Trotskyists, including those of the Spartacists, which have more and more been pushing me in the direction of seeing, in the original detachment of those left communists from the Third International long before Trotsky organized his Communist Left Opposition, a prophetic move in communist politics.

That, so far, is what I consider to be your most powerful point. I'm inclined to view left communists who sought to "hang on" in the period after the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 to the integrity of their program and their theory and as recognizing the reality of the new epoch of counter-revolution that had set in as being pretty much omnipresent and not very possible to "crack" as having pretty much been right. That made it less possible to "crack," say, potential revolutionary situations which seemed to have arisen in diverse parts of the world after the first revolutionary wave of workers' struggles of 1917-1923 -- such as in China in 1925-1927, in Spain in the 1930s, and so forth.

I'm inclined to think the problem with organized Trotskyism is, it was more optimistic -- too optimistic -- about the prospects of being able to "crack" such situations and have an impact, and its optimism was not as realistic as the viewpoint of the left communists.

I'm currently reading the Trotskyist book put out by the Spartacists' library, the Prometheus Research Library, on the American communist, James P. Cannon, entitled, "James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and Speeches." The more I read these writings and speeches of Cannon, the more I'm struck by the tendency toward opportunism in Cannon's approach. I'm also reading the Trotskyist book of the former Spartacist, Jan Norden, who now runs his own Trotskyist group, the Internationalist Group, but the book I'm reading is still published by the Spartacists' Prometheus Research Library, and it's called, "Yugoslavia, East Europe and the Fourth International: The Evolution of Pabloist Liquidationism." And reading this, again, I'm continually struck by the seemingly criminal opportunism of Cannon in how he more or less aided and abetted Gerry Healy and Michael Pablo, for instance, in destroying the British Trotskyist party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and in trying to destroy the French Organization Communiste Internationalist because of its opposition to Pablo's notion of "centuries of deformed workers' states". Additionally, it's quite clear to me that all this did was to bring home to the American Socialist Workers Party of Cannon Pablo's effort to destroy THAT party as well.

What's significant to me is, in the introduction to the Spartacist book of Cannon's 1920s writings, they dishonestly write there that Cannon seemed to be groping in the 1920s in the direction of a more policy-driven (that is, program-driven) approach in communist politics, but when Norden was their boy, he openly made the point that as late as the late 1940s and early 1950s, Cannon was doing slimy, sleazy, criminally opportunist crap that in no way bore any relationship to a policy-driven or program-driven approach, or, at least, that's my "take" on it. And when I read this stuff, I am driven to your conclusions that Cannon was operating with what amounted to capitalist politics inside an ostensibly communist or ostensibly workers' organization.

I here said "ostensibly communist or ostensibly workers' organization," I emphasize. It's my impression left communists hold that Trotskyism is more or less a kind of logical emanation of the old Social-Democratic stagist politics, and that the Third International was similarly a kind of logical emanation of the old Social-Democratic stagist politics, and that this is what led the Social-Democrats into betraying the proletariat in World War One, and that is what led the Stalinists and Trotskyists, in your view, in betraying the proletarians in World War Two.

My main problem here has to do with your concept of what constituted "betrayal" in World War Two. While I increasingly think of organized Trotskyism as being too preoccupied with state ownership of property, on the other hand, I do have a recurring question having to do with the tendencies of labor and workers' movements worldwide to defend state ownership even while private capitalists remain the ruling class against privatization, but also to defend state ownership in situations like China when 75 percent of the economy is state-owned, but privatization results in massive labor resistance to resulting unemployment on the ground. My tendency in such situations is, side with the proletarians in that situation, and defend against privatization. I don't know or am not sure how you and other left communists would operate in that kind of situation. It seems the very fact proletarians engage in various parts of the world in defenses against privatization at least on the surface of things points to state ownership as in some sense defensible. That's my point here. I'm not sure you would agree with me, and I suspect you would not, but I'm not sure.

Now, I did not immediately address some of your interesting questions. Let me try.

First, you asked how a military defense of Iran or military defeat of the U.S. were the U.S. to militarily attack Iran might aid the proletariat. You also added some other interesting questions such as how did the proletariats benefit from the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, or how proletarians benefit by defeats of U.S. forces in Iraq. You also asked how the U.S. is the linchpin of the world capitalist system.

Let me deal with that last first.

My view of U.S. capitalism is roughly that for a long time, it was the linchpin of world capitalism and world imperialism, but that it's also been in a long period of decline that goes back about 40 years. (I have been impressed by some of the articles in the ICC site on line on this issue, and also by some of the articles in the IBRP's site on this issue.) I disagree with you on the military issue. I think, far and away, the U.S. military still remains to this day the most powerful imperialist military on earth, and I think it is no exaggeration to suggest that the U.S. is the most dangerous imperialist power on earth due to this, and additionally, to the palpable instability of the U.S. ruling class compared with other ruling classes. But it's the U.S. military which makes the U.S. the main "rogue state" on the planet.

That, however, puts the U.S. into a seriously untenable position, because it is trying to continue running two imperialist military occupations and wars on the basis of a quite economically and financially bankrupt empire. The U.S. is economically increasingly a basket case. Just about a week ago, representatives of Brazil, India, Russia, and China, met to discuss whether or not to begin at least thinking about putting their financial and economic eggs into different currency "baskets" than the U.S. dollar. And that is a reflection of the underlying nature of the U.S. economy as what I called a basket case. The worlds' big moneymen know the U.S. dollar is only still used as the main currency simply because of the fear of the world's capitalists outside the U.S. lest a run to get rid of U.S. dollars might lead into a kind of unknown area. That is the only thing up to now that's so far kept them from no longer thinking of the dollar as main currency and discarding it. But that, again, itself reflects the literally bankrupt and economically and financially worthless and valueless (in the quite literal sense of what Marx meant by value) nature of that chunk of global real estate called, the U.S.A.

So there is this searing contradiction and conflict in U.S. capitalist imperialism. They're still trying to run a titanic imperialist military machine and empire on the basis of an economy which no longer will permit this.

That is the objective situation at the moment.

Furthermore, if the worlds' big capitalists do, indeed, start discarding U.S. dollars and opting in a big way for other currencies, that will induce inside the U.S. side by side with the growing unemployment enormous inflation. I suspect that not too long from now, we in the U.S. will be living with something not too different from the kind of inflationary price rises which the Germans had, for instance, in 1923, when people were wheeling wheelbarrows full of the German currency, the Deutschmarks, around at that time to purchase a candy bar. We haven't gotten there yet, but I think that's in the cards and not very long from now.

So that is the way I view the American military. My disagreement with you is that I most emphatically think it remains the key factor in world capitalist politics, and I think most of the rulers of the major powers, as well as of the minor powers, on some level know that.

Now, then, on your other interesting questions, particularly on how military defeats of given countries aid the proletariats. I approach this from the standpoint Lenin more or less approached it in his time, I have to acknowledge. Lenin's position more or less was embodied in the phrase, revolutionary defeatism. He held that the defeat of one's own imperialism in inter-imperialist wars had, first of all, the impact of creating internally in a given defeated country either massive sentiment that would act as an objective obstacle to the imperialist bourgeoisie of that country carrying out imperialist military adventures for a considerable period into the future, or, even beyond that, might induce the explosion of class struggle in that country internally.

I think Lenin's view on this was confirmed both in Russia in 1917 when, despite Russia's being formally aligned with the "victorious" Allied powers in World War One, in de facto terms, Russian tsarist imperialism had put millions of Russian peasants into uniform and into harm's way, and by 1917, six and a half million of them had died in that inter-imperialist cauldron. While in formal terms, the Allies "won" against Germany and Austria, from the standpoint of the Russian peasants and workers who made up the Russian tsarist armed forces, that meant little or nothing, because from their standpoint, continued involvement in the inter-imperialist war was a defeat for their classes -- the workers, and the peasants. And Lenin "got" that. Therefore, his standpoint of revolutionary defeatism was a colossally significant factor in both theoretically and programmatically arming the Bolsheviks of Russia when the historical moment of 1917 presented itself.

Additionally, I think Lenin's view also confirmed itself correct in Germany in 1918. The military defeat of Germany led to the smashing of war-induced quiescence and, with that smashing of war-induced quiescence, the mass outpouring of mass proletarian rage, the setting up of the huge networks of workers' councils throughout the country, sailors' councils on the ships, soldiers' councils in the barracks, and all in a pretty short period of time at the time of the German surrender to the Allies. So again, the defeat of the German bourgeoisie in that inter-imperialist slaughter did, indeed, result in the materializing of a revolutionary situation in Germany in October, November, December of 1918, and that revolutionary situation continued till the counter-revolution was finally victorious in smashing the revolutionary movement of the proletarian masses in March-April of 1919.

I think the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam led to the "Vietnam syndrome," which was the primarily working class population's massive disenchantment with further U.S. imperialist military adventures for a long period of time, and that, in turn, became, at least for a time, an obstacle to the U.S. imperialist ruling class's appetites for military adventures in other peoples' countries and against other peoples of the world. And in my view, that was and is a good thing. It took a period of ideologically "rearming" U.S. imperialism after the defeat in Vietnam, after Watergate, which were linked, before the American imperialist ruling class could again conduct some major imperialist military interventions against other peoples of the world.

You ask me how the preservation of the Iranian state benefits the masses. Well, if I had wanted to preserve the Iranian state, then the question arises, why would I have proposed slogans for the Iranian working people to set up workers' councils, and disarm the bourgeois cops and security squads in Iran? If one goes back and read's Lenin's book, "The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution," Lenin differentiates between a state of the toilers (a dictatorship of the proletariat, a dictatorship of the toiling and exploited and oppressed masses) and a state of the ruling classes (in today's world, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, of the capitalist exploiters). If I had wanted to preserve the Iranian state -- and I'm assuming your charge refers to the present Iranian state -- would I have proposed that the Iranian workers set up workers councils as both the organs of revolutionary struggle against the Iranian state and as the embryonic organs of an Iranian dictatorship of the proletariat, and if I had wanted to preserve the (present) Iranian state, would I have as the title of my programmatic suggestions entitled it "For the Secular Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Iran"? The secular dictatorship of the proletariat in Iran implies as an inherently necessary corollary the overthrow of the entire Iranian ruling class, all factions of it, all factions of the theocracy plus all factions of the secular elements of capital. How can you not see that?

Back to October 1917, the October Revolution. No, actually, what the proletarian victory in the October 1917 Revolution (October by the old calendar in effect at the time, November by the later new calendar) was was not the determination of the Russian proletarian masses to win power despite some threat from German militarism and imperialism, but, to the contrary, it was the recognition by the Russian proletarian and peasant masses that in terms of the enormous destruction 4 years of World War had caused to the proletarian and peasant masses inside Russia to the tune of about six and one-half million deaths, the classes defeated were the proletarian and peasant masses, and they were simply sick of the war and wanted no more of it. German militarism was not, to them, a threat, because in class terms, it was a matter of indifference to them by the time of the October 25, 1917 (November 7, 1917) Bolshevik Revolution whether the Russian bourgeoisie or German bourgeoisie ruled; they wanted all bourgeoisies out of power. That is the point here.

That was the actual situation on the ground embodying Lenin's slogan of revolutionary defeatism. That was the mood, the real and actual mood, on the ground among the great mass of the Russian workers and peasants, including in the soldiers and sailors, who, after all, were either workers or peasants in uniform. Lenin's slogan of revolutionary defeatism caught the point that in that kind of situation, the masses opt for defeat, and the old patriotisms no longer have their effect.

Ironically, however, once the masses had power in their hands through the soviets, at THAT point, when German militaristic imperialism sought to threaten the power of the masses, they joined up in the Red Army in droves. The Soviet Red Army in its formation was a workers' and peasants' revolutionary armed force. Its power lay in this class nature of it as a class military instrument of the proletarian and peasant classes. The workers didn't want the bosses back and the peasants didn't want the landlords back, and it was quite clear to them if ANY of the foreign capitalist imperialist armed forces who invaded Russia after the victory of the masses of October 25, 1917 to smash the victory of the proletarian and peasant masses were victorious over the masses, then the workers would get the bosses back and the peasants would get the landlords back. Is that so hard to comprehend? That's why they fought with such bitterness against the 14 imperialist armies that invaded the Soviet Union over a 3 or 4-year period, and that is why they smashed every invading armed force sent against them. Is that so hard to understand? And, by the way, Trotsky's Red Army was not simply something new in the world. During the American Civil War, for instance, Lincoln put guns into the hands of 200 thousand black soldiers, and he and his government taught them how to read and to write, and that is why they fought mercilessly against the Slaveholders' Rebellion, the Confederate States of America. The 200 thousand black soldiers were a key factor in the American federal government's armed force in the Americal Civil War of 1861-1865, or what communists call, the Second American Revolution, which was a social revolution, because it smashed slavery. Or if you go even further backwards in history, the French Revolution developed its own Revolutionary army, its own revolutionary armed force of peasants and poor people, and they fought and smashed every European armed force sent against them. The principle of the class war can be a very powerful military tool in the hands of the workers and peasants. Even in the English Civil War of 1640-1649, Cromwell's armed force was of the type of a lower-income-based mass armed force fighting against the upper-income-based enemy, and the plebeian armed force smashed the older forces of the king and crown in that great social revolution. Do you think it's a mistake that the Russian revolutionaries studied the histories of other peoples' social revolutions and also of other peoples' social revolutions' military armed forces? I don't.

But again, how can you or anyone conclude that my putting forth such slogans as, form workers councils, or disarm the bourgeois cops and bourgeois security squads (which means, in de facto terms, smashing the old state) equals a desire to preserve the old state? How? Tell me how you get that conclusion from what I wrote?

I think that more or less sums up how I view these issues, Micah.

Anyway, good to hear from you.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Allan: I haven't got time at present to respond at length to your replies to myself or Micah, but the question you raise at the end of the latter encapsulates the whole problem:

"But again, how can you or anyone conclude that my putting forth such slogans as, form workers councils, or disarm the bourgeois cops and bourgeois security squads (which means, in de facto terms, smashing the old state) equals a desire to preserve the old state? How? Tell me how you get that conclusion from what I wrote?"

So on the one hand you are calling for the destruction of the Iranian state by workers' councils (a class demand, even if it's not yet on the immediate agenda in my opinion). But at the same time, if there is an attack by the US/Britain/NATO, you are for the defence and indeed the victory of the same Iranian state that you are aiming to destroy. It just makes no sense. One scenario means supporting workers' strikes against the regime, mutiny in the army, etc; the other involves subordinating the working class to the Iranian war economy and military regime. This was precisely the whole dilemma' of Trotskyism during the second world war, resolved either by betraying internationalism, as with the mainstream of the movement, or breaking with Trotskyism, as the best elements (Munis in Mexico, RKD in Germany and France, Stinas in Greece etc)did at that time.

Comments about IBRP’s statement about events in Iran published even IBRP’s site too.

After the election circus in Iran, which resulted in confrontation between bourgeois gangs, political currents took different positions dependent on which class they belong. The left of capital as always tried to play its roll as good as possible. Tudeh Party, Fedaian Majority became directly mouthpiece to the Moussavi. The radical phrase part of the left, in the head “Worker”-“Communist” party of Iran proclaimed beginning of the revolution even presented the leader of revolution (Hamid Taqvaee) and on another ways supported the struggling bourgeois gangs.

In Iran a worker must have two or three job to support his family and IBRP points correctly: ”The working class of that area are also subject to attacks on living conditions brought on by the entire world bourgeoisie.” There is a general dissatisfaction within the working class and in the last years working class has been radicalised gradually. But in the absence of an established internationalist positions in the Iranian political milieu, the protest of working class brutally represses without to indicate protests of a social class. Internationalist positions are very weak in Iran and its militants very isolated. They must try to break down this isolation and establish connection and collaboration with other internationalists. Of course internationalists with more established positions have more responsibility in this point.

IBRP entirely correct points to “Bourgeois rivalries” in the events of Iran. But IBRP forgets its roll as, an avant-garde of proletariat; a revolutionary organization and it resulted in a passive politic. IBRP have been one of the most important currents within Left Communism and militants outside IBRP have had great expectations on it. IBRP, ICC and The Bordigists stand for positions and traditions, which make these currents the true defenders of proletarian positions, i.e. the tradition of the communist left.

Workers of Iran Khodro (Iran’s car industry) stroked in 30 minutes to support people’s protest. The revolutionary organization should say to these workers, instead of supporting slogan “down with dictator” expand your struggle, independent of all bourgeois gangs, against capitalism, with slogan “down with wage slavery”. The avant-garde of the proletariat must try to avoid working class acting as canon fodder for any of the struggling bourgeois gangs. The compass of proletariat; the IBRP should show the road of class struggle, for our class, the working class. IBRP missing this important points in its analyze.

Internationalists in their analyze must describe for workers, why die for democracy? Capitalist democracy and capitalist dictatorship are two sides of the same coin. Capitalist democracy is not a paradise. You that want die for democracy, you could see, how the workers of Volvo cried in the factories of Volvo when they became unemployed! A passive practice avoids the revolutionary organization of its very important task, contributing to developing and generalizing of class-consciousness.

If the IBRP (or the ICC) is going to play an important role in its historical task as one valuable avant-garde of the proletariat it must understand its roll the leading role of the revolutionary organization.

Long live Left Communism

June 24, 2009
Wednesday

Dear Comrade Alf:

Thanks again for your response. I do find it most interesting, and helpful.

Let me see if I can address the issue of what you call "destroying the state while defending it."

My reason for focusing on Lenin's position in this matter was, Lenin partly saw the issue in tactical terms, and partly in programmtic terms, or that is my impression. That is, he saw the issue of revolutionary defeatism, in part, as a method of breaking the proletariat from support to "it's own" bourgeoisie. He also saw the raising of the slogan of the right of national self-determination for nations and peoples oppressed by bigger imperialist nation-states by revolutionaries of those bigger imperialist nation-states as being, in part, a tactical question of seeking to win to the world revolutionary party the adherence of revolutionaries in the countries imperialistically and colonialistically oppressed by the bourgeoisies of the greater imperialistic countries' ruling classes and nation-states.

In this regard, I again recommend Lenin's interesting book, "Socialism and War," but also his book, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism." I believe, offhand, or seem to recall, he wrote "Socialism and War" in or around either 1915 or 1916, and I believe he wrote "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" in or around 1916. He specifically suggested the objective programmatic necessity of revolutionaries of all belligerent countries preaching in the trenches the defeat of "one's own" bourgeoisie in given inter-imperialist wars, and he says this in "Socialism and War."

But again, he added in "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," which I believe he also wrote in 1916, as well as in "Socialism and War," his view that there was a difference between a war of greater imperialist powers against colonial or semi-colonial powers and, on the other hand, an inter-imperialist war of relatively "equal" imperialisms. He argued that in a war of a great imperialist power against an imperialistically and colonialistically subjugated weaker power, revolutionaries ought to side militarily with the military victory of the weaker power.

By the way, on this issue, if one goes to pre-World War One international conferences of the Social-Democracies before the break came in World War One of revolutionaries with the traitors of the Social-Democracies, it is my impression that at least at some of these international conferences, when the issue of taking sides in conflicts of greater imperialist countries with smaller countries arose, both Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg held a view roughly the same -- that is, that the military victory of the smaller countries was preferable. I don't think this was a new position among the revolutionary left-wingers in even the pre-World War One movement of socialists that before World War One called itself Social-Democratic. There's interesting stuff on this in books like the American Socialist Workers Party-published book, "Lenin's Struggle for a Revolutionary International," in which there's interesting stuff embodying conference discussions, including some comments of the revolutionary-minded, or left-wing, delegates, including Lenin, Luxemburg, and similar people. The issue was seen as one of a kind of de facto alliance of exploited and oppressed toiling proletarians of the world and, on the other hand, nations (peoples) oppressed by bigger imperialist powers, against the capitalist bourgeoisies and imperialist ruling classes of the world, and the left-wing of the pre-World War One movement were anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist much earlier and more decisively than just in World War One. On the other hand, the more centrist, and also more right-wing and brazenly openly reformist, elements of the pre-World War One Second International, tended to view the role of imperialist colonialism as "civilizing" the "lesser peoples," "lesser nations." This was a pretty vilely racist, chauvinist, imperialistic viewpoint. In World War One, Lenin broke hard in all ways against this. But at no time do I recall seeing Luxemburg side with the "imperialist colonialist 'socialists'" in the pre-World War One period, either, in her comments at these international conferences of Second Internationalists. So far as I can recall, all revolutionaries at these conferences, whatever their particular tactical approach to the sorts of slogans to raise, held this notion of imperialism and colonialism having some kind of "civilizing mission" in imperialistically colonialistically dominated and oppressed countries as being basically vile right-wing nonsense of the worst sort.

Lenin in his view differentiated between what he called military defense of a weaker power against a major imperialist country, and, on the other hand, his view that simultaneously, revolutionaries ought to give no POLITICAL support to the leadership of the weaker power. The question, in his view, was of a military bloc (in the given situation of an imperialist war of a big imperialist power against a smaller or weaker power) of revolutionaries with the weaker power, while they simultaneously gave no political support to the leadership of the weaker power.

In this view of Lenin's, what he was trying to do was to develop a global revolutionary workers' party, because he deemed it objectively necessary for revolutionaries in the "home" or "mother country," that is, in the big imperialist power, to be able, in a sense, to look honestly in the faces the revolutionaries and proletarians of the weaker power as genuinely honest enemies of the ruling class and government of the big imperialist power, and not act under the aegis of a pretense of being "revolutionaries" while objectively acting as agents of the big imperialist power's ruling classes and imperialistic and colonialistic ambitions.

Lenin was particularly concerned about revolutionaries in tsarist Russia being able to present themselves to revolutionaries and exploited and oppressed proletarians of nations long oppressed by tsarist Russia as honest allies of the revolutionary toiling, oppressed, exploited masses of the nations long oppressed by tsarist Russia, and, in Lenin's view, only the presentation by the revolutionaries of the imperialist power of Russia of the question of wars between tsarist Russia against nations and peoples and exploited and oppressed proletarians of such long-oppressed nations the empire of tsarist Russia had long oppressed as being a question, for revolutionaries of the "oppressor" great Russian tsarist nation-state, of smashing the great Russian tsarist nation-state. This implied, as a logical corollary, revolutionaries of great Russia saying, if a successful revolution occurs here, in great Russia, we will grant you nations historically oppressed by tsarist Russia complete and unconditional freedom of national self-determination up through and including the right to secede if you so choose. Lenin viewed this both as programmatically correct in the classical sense that revolutionary socialists had always supported unconditionally the democratic right of national self-determination going back to Karl Marx's and Frederick Engels' writings on Ireland and the Irish question in the 19th Century, and also viewed it as a tactical necessity for welding revolutionaries and exploited proletarians of the oppressed nations to revolutionaries and exploited proletarians of the "oppressor" nation-states in a common class war against all exploiters and oppressors. In the same way, Marx and Engels, writing on Ireland and the Irish question, voiced the viewpoint, "The English worker cannot be free so long as the Irish worker is enslaved by British imperialism." Here, there was in Marx's and Engels' view embryonically expressed the view later developed in greater breadth and depth by Lenin in his writings on the national question.

This, in Lenin's view, was partly a question of the principled position of revolutionaries having, as a condition of being revolutionaries, to oppose all chauvinisms and imperialistic attitudes of "their own" bourgeoisie particularly when they were revolutionaries of the greater imperialist power subjugating some less powerful nation or nation-state, and also it was a tactical issue, for Lenin, of making the revolutionaries of the greater power seem in the eyes of the toiling, oppressed, and exploited masses of the imperialistically and colonialistically dominated weaker power be seen with greater trust than might be the case if the revolutionaries of the greater power, under the pretense of pretending to be revolutionaries, took a kind of abstract line of a plague on both houses in a situation of a war of a greater power for imperialistic and colonialistic domination of a smaller power. That is, there was both a programmatic aspect to Lenin's position, and a tactical aspect to Lenin's position.

I think that there were and are legitimate reasons why Rosa Luxemburg, though born in Poland and although having gotten her start as a revolutionary in Poland, opposed the slogan of Lenin's for the right of national self-determination of Poland. Part of her revolutionary opposition to this slogan derived from the fact that Polish socialism was divided into a truly right-wing, nationalistic, crypto-racist pseudo-"socialist" party which was Polish nationalist through and through, but also viciously hostile to Russian workers, as well as Polish Jews, while on the other hand, in the history and traditions of Polish socialism, there had been a genuinely revolutionary leftist workers' party in Poland, the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, to whose traditions Rosa Luxemburg harked back, which itself opposed the slogan of the national self-determination of Poland. Indeed, some of the militant socialists in this revolutionary leftist communist Polish party later became adherents of the Third International, despite their disagreement with Lenin on the slogan of the right of national self-determination for Poland. I should also here add that Lenin did not in every or all circumstances always view the raising of the slogan of the right of national self-determination for Poland as being correct. For instance, during certain periods of World War One, when the overwhelming issue was the issue of the inter-imperialist World War between Russia as a junior imperialist partner of English and French imperialisms against German and Austrian imperialisms, and in that context, Poland's nationalists opportunistically raised the slogan of national self-determination mainly as a way of aligning themselves with one of the two imperialist sides, German-Austrian imperialism, Lenin clearly recognized that here, the raising of the national self-determination slogan or even the right of national self-determination, in that context, was unprincipled and incorrect and, basically, in de facto terms, aligned Poland with one of the two major sides in the inter-imperialist World War, the German-Austrian side. The issue here was context.

My view of a U.S.-British-NATO military-imperialist attack on Iran right now exists not in the context of, say, an inter-imperialist world war between the U.S. and Russia, but, rather, simply on the basis of the long-time fact that the relation of the U.S., Britain, and NATO imperialist bourgeoisies to Iran has been the relation of greater imperialist bourgeoisies to a lesser and weaker capitalist power, one historically subject to have been imperialistically and colonialistically dominated by the greater imperialistic powers and, in economic terms, sucked dry very often by them. What happened, for instance, to the bourgeois-democratically elected Iranian left nationalist, Mossadeq, in 1953, at the hands of Anglo-American imperialism and the American CIA, basically forcing out of power Mossadeq because of Mossadeq's nationalization of U.S.-owned oil companies, is here pertinent. This was the continuation on the part of the U.S. of the politics and economics of great capitalist imperialist domination of a smaller and weaker power, Iran. It is in the historical context of that long unequal relationship that I view it as necessary in the context of the uprisings in Iran for revolutionaries in the big imperialist powers of the West, particularly the U.S., England, and the NATO countries, to be able to look revolutionaries and members of the exploited and toiling proletarians of Iran in the face honestly and say, we in the advanced and powerful imperialist countries favor, in the event of the imperialist bourgeoisies of "our" countries using the risings in your country as some kind of excuse to get involved militarily against your country, no intervention by the imperialist bourgeoisies' governments of our countries, and favor in that eventuality, the military defeat by your country of the military effort of "our own" imperialist bourgeoisies. That, it seems to me, is the way of honestly building a world revolutionary communist party of equals internationally.

Does that mean Iranian revolutionaries might not take a position analogous to the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania -- recognizing in their own countries that, for instance, the bourgeoisie of their country might use nationalism or nationalism hijacked by Islamic theocratic religious fundamentalism as a diversion to seek to damp down the proletarian struggle in their country against their own ruling classes? They might, indeed. All I am saying is, the job of revolutionaries in the big imperialist countries is to help, not hinder, whatever kind of revolutionary development among the revolutionary communist internationalists and exploited and oppressed proletarians of the long imperialistically and colonialistically oppressed and dominated Iranian people takes place. That, I think, is the road toward building an honest internationalist communist revolutionary party of equals.

I don't think my perspective implies subordinating the workers' struggles in Iran to the Iranian regime, because the job of revolutionary internationalist communists is to give no political support to the government, theocracy, bourgeoisie at all.

Additionally, I am not absolutist on this, because the issue of context in Iran particularly is overwhelmingly key in determining what Iranian communist internationalist revolutionaries must do tactically. If class war breaks out in Iran, workers' struggles, that obviously makes the context quite different. But then, on top of that, if, for instance, Iran were in the process of seriously moving toward becoming a Red Iran of Workers' Councils, an Iranian Soviet Republic, a Secular Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Iran, then the issue arises, don't you honestly think the U.S., England, and NATO would, in that instance, be EVEN MORE LIKELY to intervene in that situation? I do. PARTICULARLY in that situation, it would behoove revolutionaries in the big imperialist powers to do all in our power, including encouraging the workers in OUR OWN countries to go on strike, refuse to load war munitions onto ships bound for the Persian Gulf, make class war against OUR OWN bourgeoisies, to hinder OUR OWN imperialist bourgeoisies from conducting military operations against the Iranian people. The problem with an American, British, or NATO military expedition against Iran in a situation in which Iran is moving in the direction of a Red Iran of Workers' Councils is precisely that at such an historical moment, that American, British, or NATO imperialist military expeditionary force would then have the impact of forcing the Iranians into defending their country against the imperialist invasion. That is precisely what happens in situations of imperialist military invasions by big imperialist powers like the U.S., England, and the NATO powers against weaker and long-imperialistically oppressed and dominated powers like Iran. It is not the job of internationalist communists here in the big powers to dictate tactics or assessment or appraisals to internationalist communists inside Iran in that kind of situation. Sometimes, a tactical military bloc makes sense in that situation with the class enemy, but sometimes there's no sense in it and not even the ability to carry it out. The issue is one that can only be judged on the ground by the comrades in the immediate area, and it would be the height of "great imperialistic chauvinism" among professedly internationalist communists in the great imperialist powers to pretend to dictate tactics in that situation to our class sisters and brothers, the internationalist communists and exploited and oppressed toilers and proletarians of Iran.

I am inclined to view the breaks of the left communists like Munis, the RKD, and other lefts with the Trotskyists in World War Two as at least in part exalting the issue of tactics to the level of principles. But while I say that, I also think there were other issues at work.

One was an issue of the unresolved nature of how Trotskyists at that time addressed the issue of anti-private capitalist state expropriations by the Kremlin Stalinists and Red Army, which after World War Two, created a serious crisis in the international Trotskyist movement, and led to the emergence of people like Michel Pablo and his liquidationist current.

But I think another aspect of the issue had to do with a possibility you seem to here be raising with which I'm grappling. And this is, in my view, my most serious problem with Trotskyism, as with Lenin's positions in World War One.

I think Lenin was a sincere revolutionary and he sincerely aimed in his approach at building a world revolutionary communist internationalist party.

But, for instance, in her polemic while she was in a German prison on the issue of both national self-determination and the issue of the Bolsheviks' slogan of land to the peasantry, Rosa Luxemburg in, I believe it was, 1917 or 1918 before she was released from that German prison, noted that these two slogans would, indeed, give to the Bolsheviks many headaches and many problems. And I'm inclined to see merit in her positions.

Furthermore, I think the merits of her positions were in key ways confirmed during the course of the terrible Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. The slogans of the right of nations to self-determination and the exercise of self-determination were, for instance, often used by nationalists in the geographical areas of the nations long previously oppressed by Russian tsarist imperialism not in the way Lenin had originally intended, but, instead, in a way designed to weld these long-oppressed nations to the imperialistic interests of the enemies of the Red Communist Internationalist Soviet Republic at that moment, the 14 imperialist capitalist nation-states' armed forces then in the process of seeking to destroy Red Russia. Luxemburg saw that might occur, and wrote her polemic on it. I also am inclined to see that as having been confirmed by the data amassed and adduced by the liberal English historian of the Bolshevik Revolution, the late E. H. Carr, in his 3-volume work, "The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923." The Soviets were compelled in de facto terms sometimes to put the issue of the class war in each given specific nation ahead of the formal issue of national self-determination in such geographical areas, the better to weld the toiling and exploited masses in such nations to the toiling and exploited peoples in Russia proper. That seemed to run in opposition to what Lenin had expected would happen by the hardnosed Bolshevik defense of the right of nations to self-determination and the Bolsheviks raising that slogan.

I think the problem with the Trotskyists in World War Two, again, has a lot to do with tendencies to put democratic illusions in some of the Trotskyist movements ahead of the communist internationalist class war program the Trotskyists at least formally supported. But I also am inclined to view comrades like Munis, the RKD and Stinas (and I confess my ignorance generally of the RKD and Stinas, and would like further information and elucidation on that) as putting on an equal level questions of tactics with questions of program and principles.

My reason for taking this long in explaining was, however, to basically try to explain, as best I could explain it, what I think Lenin saw and perceived and was trying to do. I don't think he was insincere. I think he was trying to build a world revolutionary party of equals, and he was acutely conscious of the long tendency of supposed "socialists" and supposed "communists" in great imperialistic powers to be patronizing and condescending and know-it-all toward revolutionaries and the exploited proletarians of oppressed nations long oppressed by great imperialistic powers. I think he thought you could only build an internationalist communist revolutionary world workers party of equals on the basis of the communists of the great powers unconditionally and uncompromisingly putting the smashing of "their own" great imperialist bourgeoisies at the top of the agenda, because it was those great imperialist bourgeoisies which were, in Lenin's view, the primary obstacle to communist revolution in all countries, great imperialist as well as countries long oppressed by great imperialist capitalism.

Having written all this, however, I am also inclined, now, from watching the evident success of the International Communist Current of securing adherence of communist internationalists to their international of revolutionary workers from many countries, including many countries of parts of the world long oppressed by great capitalist imperialism like that of my country, U.S. imperialism, to question my long-held view in this matter. I don't think Lenin was insincere. But I'm increasingly of the view that he may have bent the stick a little too far in one direction. That, too, by the way, might, as you suggest, have negatively impacted on what happened to Trotskyism in World War Two in some countries. If that is the case, I might be more persuaded of what you wrote of Munis, the RKD, and other comrades.

Anyway, I did enjoy this interchange, Alf, because it caused me to have to, about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through my long defense of Lenin and explanation of what I viewed as Lenin's perspective on things, actually stop and think, yeah, but what of the matter of Rosa Luxemburg's polemic while she was in prison, and its evidently having been confirmed in many instances during the horrifically bloody Russian Civil War? She wrote it from the standpoint of unconditional solidarity with the Bolsheviks and with the Russian proletarian socialist revolution, as a comrade. And I think her points had merit.

For now, I'm done.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

June 25, 2009
Thursday

Dear Internationalist:

I think you have, to use an American phrase, "hit the nail on the head," when you make the correct point that revolutionary internationalists in the Iranian situation have to intervene and, to intervene, have to have worked-out positions. You also make the correct point when you said revolutionary internationalists, being isolated, have to find ways of linking up.

Reading the bourgeois press in my country of America and listening to reports on the bourgeois media in my country of America, I get the impression there are widescale arrests going on now in Iran. If they are making some arrests of middle class intellectuals, I suspect they are making many, many, many arrests of militant workers, so, of course, it should not be necessary for others outside Iran to advise you to be careful.

I think your point about not being passive, however, is the key point that has to be stressed.

While I in this debate among internationalists have been criticized for my support for some of what the Trotskyists wrote and said, one thing, I think, that both comrade Trotsky and comrade Bordiga stressed was, the role of revolutionary leadership for the success of a workers' revolution, and that implies the importance of a revolutionary communist internationalist party of the workers -- of the advanced guard of the workers.

I do not think the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of October 25, 1917 could have succeeded without the Bolshevik Party and without Lenin. That demonstrates the central importance of a revolutionary party of the advanced guard of the working class and its crucial role to make any possible revolution succeed.

And this is not "just" Trotsky's view. It was the view of Bordiga as well. Additionally, in the May Days in Barcelona, Spain, in 1936, the former American Trotskyist, who had left the American Trotskyist party and formed his own party, the Revolutionary Workers League, Hugo Oehler, and the Spanish Trotskyist who later became a left communist, Grandizo Munis, both criticized the tendency of some of the Spanish Trotskyists to subordinate their programmatic and organizational independence to being in this or that party or being affiliated with this or that party. The central importance of revolutionary leadership was negatively confirmed by its absence in Spain in 1936-1939, and that eventually led to the victory of Franco's fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Internationalist;

I agree on the basic level with everything you are telling. But the important thing is to be very careful while evaluating these kind of things. The absence of a communist leadership is not a problem of absence of will. It is of course true that as communist militants we should always try to centralize the core of the political milleu inside proletariat. And we know that these cores express themselves in certain forms corresponding to the historical epoch that the struggle is waged. Today, the working class in countries that communists could not survived the counter revolution (1923-1945) and could not develop their political internationalist minorities in the following period after 1968 is in a very dangerous situation in that sense. The countries in the middle east which are subjected to continous terrors, wars and civil wars between ruling fractions are especially weak in that point. There is scarcely any political group, circle or discussion group that could escape the mutual terror of imperialism and its left.

In that regard it is perfectly expectable that, early workers upsurges in countries like Iran (even though there is non appearently at least now), can be defeated or directed by the shy stalinists like, Iranian "workers communist" party to a deadly adventure. In that situation our role should not in any way be sending enthusiastic salutes to the workers by encouraging ourselves with the "news from afar". We should clearly warn the workers, and especially political minorities who will listen if there are any. We should explain clearly the dangers of the situation. It is very easy to get lost oneselve in the shining images of the events. But when the dusts of the burgeoisie's bright noise settles it is generally workers who are damaged. This especially the case for the middle east for a long time.

In that sense I think what IBRP did was very correct with their statement.

July 1, 2009
Wednesday

Dear Comrades:

1. The first thing which must be stated is, Iranian comrades must, above all, BE CAREFUL, WATCH YOUR BACKS, NOT DO ANYTHING CRAZY AT THE PRESENT TIME! The Iranian Islamic Theocratic bourgeois gangster capitalist regime AIMS TO KILL YOU! So, BE COMPLETELY AWARE OF THAT!
2. Second: what's objectively necessary -- PROGRAMMATICALLY -- is a RED IRAN OF WORKERS' COUNCILS. That, and that alone, will BEGIN the solution of the problems of the Iranian people as a whole, and the Iranian proletariat "per se."
3. Third: ONLY the Iranian proletariat "per se" has the ability to SMASH AND DESTROY EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF OPPRESSION IN IRAN. This is the perspective of KARL MARX of the REVOLUTION IN PERMANENCE sometimes referred to as the perspective of LEON TROTSKY as the PERMANENT REVOLUTION. But ANYONE TELLING YOU THERE IS SOME INNATE AND ORGANIC CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE TWO IS YOUR OBJECTIVE ENEMY.
4. Fourth: the PERSPECTIVE OF THE WORKERS' COUNCILS AS THE COMING IRANIAN WORKERS' GOVERNMENT A/K/A COMING IRANIAN DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT is ALSO the perspective of the SPREADING OF THE IRANIAN PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION to the REST OF THE WORLD, or, in other words, the PERSPECTIVE OF THE WORLD, PROLETARIAN, SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. NOTHING -- NOTHING LESS, NOTHING LESS, NOTHING LESS, NOTHING LESS, NOTHING LESS -- will lead to PEACE IN THE WORLD and, with it, PEACE FOR THE WORKING PEOPLE AND ALL OPPRESSED AND TOILING PEOPLE OF IRAN.

--Allan

Allan, I'm glad you find my reply helpful and that you are reconsidering your position. I am familiar with all of Lenin's arguments in favour of supporting weaker or oppressed nations and so on. These arguments have been criticised at length in previous ICC texts, in particular our pamphlet Nation or Class, which you can access on our site. But faced with the reality of the first imperialist world war, Lenin was able to go beyond some aspects of these mistaken ideas - for example, in mercilessly criticising the idea that Belgium should be supported because it was the weaker power faced with Germany. In Russia during the revolution, Lenin castigated the idea that any support could be given to the Provisional Government in the war effort.
I know you will answer that Belgium and Russia, even after the abdication of the Tsar, were still imperialist powers. In the 1920s, when there were still vast colonial empires, it was understandable that Lenin should consider that the colonial countries could somehow constitute a non-imperialist zone of capitalism. But again, historical experience has shown this to be false and validated Luxemburg's thesis that even the smallest nations were, in the new epoch of capitlaist decline, compelled to be imperialist.
Iran is a perfect example of this. Its role in the Middle East is evidently that of a regional imperialist power. That's why any defence of the Iranian state can only be a defence of one imperialist camp against another. And, as I said, patently absurd when you are simultaneously calling for armed workers councils to smash the very same state.

July 4, 2009
Saturday

Dear Comrade Alf:

My basic view is: IF you live in THE UNITED STATES, then you OUGHT, as your PRIMARY revolutionary responsibility, DEFEND THE NATIONAL RIGHTS OF NATIONS OPPRESSED BY THE UNITED STATES IMPERIALIST GOVERNMENT. But IF you live in, say, some country ruled by some state or ruling class whose territory is oppressed by the United States, your PRIMARY revolutionary responsibility is to DEFEND THE CLASS UNITY OF YOUR WORKING CLASS WITH THE WORKING CLASS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Do you get my point?

Comradely,
Allan

Allan. We get your point, but we reject it. Do you get OUR point? The ICC is an international organisation. It has a section in the US and sections in 'oppressed' countries. In the image of the working class, it speaks with one voice: no support for any fraction of the bourgeoisie, anywhere, period. Surely that's the most coherent approach?

As Alf has said, we'd look pretty daft if we had one section defending one state and another backing the opposition. Your position is totally incoherent, from the international perspective of the working class taken globally. This is why leftists end up tying themselves in knots over which side to support. The most important thing is to be clear and coherent, to cut the knot which ties the working class to 'national interests'.

In the epoch of decadent capitalism, all states are imperialist regardless their size, assets and authority. The only difference is that the USA is a big imperialist gangster and Iran is a smaller one. Fact is that capital cannot be accumulated in complete isolation and none state can avoid this. They ware forced to integrate themselves in the world market. “Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.” Rosa Luxemburg The Junius Pamphlet
Internationalists never should defend any imperialist power, even little as Iran and their PRIMARY revolutionary responsibility (in New York or Tehran…) are contributing to class struggle and building of world wide Internationalist Communist Party.

July 14, 2009
Tuesday

Dear Comrades:

Here's my main question:

In Lenin's time, he wrote in his book, Socialism and War, that communist proletarian revolutionists ought to propagate in the trenches of the belligerent countries the view that in inter-imperialist wars, the defeat of "one's own" bourgeoisie and "one's own" bourgeois imperialist government in inter-imperialist war was the "lesser evil."

Do you or don't you agree with that tactic Lenin put forth?

Thank you.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Lenin's position was certainly internationalist in spirit but it had certain weaknesses already pointed out to you, previously in this thread. In the post that started off this discussion, you called for "IN THE EVENT OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST IRAN, NO MATTER WHO IS IN POWER IN IRAN: FOR THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM BY IRAN AND THE SMASHING OF ANY U.S. IMPERIALIST MILITARY INTERVENTION, INVASION, OR ATTACK ON IRAN BY IRAN!"
.
This explicitly calls for a victory by Iran, regardless of who is in power. Well, at present, the working class is not in power in Iran, the bourgeoisie is. So you are effectively calling for the victory of Iranian imperialism. You are supporting the Iranian bourgeoisie, Iranian capitalism. Whatever your intentions, you are supporting an irrevocably anti-proletarian position.
.
By following the letter of Lenin's slogan, you've effectively allowed yourself (as Trotskyism has time and again) to be transformed into a cheerleader for the weaker imperialism, this time Iran. It is exactly this kind of slogan and activity that marks Troyskyism as a counter-revolutionary political force.

As for Lenin, Lenin obviously wanted Russia to be defeated but he NEVER called for the victory of German Imperialism, which is the logical application of YOUR slogan in those circumstances. He called for world revolution. The call for the defeat of your own bourgeoisie has to be read in that context: the first bourgeoisie confronted by the working class is the national bourgeoisie in whatever country workers find themselves. A military defeat could weaken the state and facilitate a workers' revolution.
.
So what would a military victory for capitalist Iran do? It would strengthen the Iranian state and allow it to double its repression against its proletariat! This is what you are effectively calling for.
.
What Trotskyism has done is pervert Lenin's internationalism into a kind of inverted national defence argument, defending another bourgeoisie rather your own. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Lenin's position in Socialism and War!

We don't agree with that particular tactic put forward in Socialism and War. It was ambiguous. From the Introduction to our pamphlet Nation or Class

"...it is necessary – even when one has been inspired by their example and their analyses – to criticise pitilessly all the mistakes they committed, and all the ambiguities which mar their slogans. Therefore, rather than the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism”, it is preferable to use the formulation advanced by Lenin alone in 1914: “The transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war”.

"The real internationalist defence of the slogan, “the main enemy is in our own country”, lies in acknowledging that the proletariat must – everywhere in the world – engage in struggle where it finds itself, against its own bourgeoisie. And the only correct interpretation possible of the “revolutionary defeatist” slogan is not contained in the proletariat ‘wishing for’ or being ‘in favour’ of the defeat of its own bourgeoisie. It means, instead, that the proletariat must struggle in a resolute manner against its own bourgeoisie, even (and especially) if that means the country’s defeat in imperialist war.

"Despite certain dubious formulations, fundamentally correct political positions guided Lenin during World War I. But today, on the contrary, his epigones use these same formulations to justify utterly absurd political positions."

You may also be interested in this article from the International Review where we discussed the national question with the Trotskyist CRI in France.

July 21, 2009
Tuesday

Dear Comrade Internationalist:

Thank you for your interesting post.

It provided as pure a "Luxemburgist" perspective on the matter as I've seen, although I am aware of the view of the ICC comrades to the effect that comrade Rosa Luxemburg's perspective embodied in her longer book, "Accumulation of Capital," was probably closer to a more correct approximation of material reality for modern imperialism than was the perspective held by comrades Nikolai Bukharin and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on this issue in the historical moment of World War One.

I do think Rosa Luxemburg's "Junius" pamphlet was a powerful statement.

But reading it over, I cannot necessarily derive from it positions on such issues as, for instance, what tactics revolutionaries ought to pursue regarding the existence of labor unions and trade unions, corresponding with the later positions of the ICC on this question. I bring this matter up not to "score points," but because of the core or crux issue of how to address in practical and down-to-earth terms what sort of practice revolutionaries ought to follow in the epoch of imperialism.

I have an older edition of "The Junius Pamphlet." Mine is dated 1967 and was apparently re-issued by a group called the Young Socialists from Ceylon in 1967. The group of Young Socialists of Ceylon were evidently associated with a Ceylonese Trotskyist organization. They have also put into this pamphlet the "Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy" for which Rosa Luxemburg was primarily responsible for writing as a key programmatic and platform statement around which a group of internationalist-minded former Social Democrats cohered. I think this programmatic statement is also interesting.

I cannot find in either Luxemburg's own pamphlet, or in the "Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy" some sort of indication that Rosa Luxemburg would have drawn as a conclusion from her militant internationalist stance during World War One and her firm view that the epoch was, indeed, an imperialist epoch requiring a qualitatively new departure a set of tactical conclusions which would correspond with those of the ICC.

Rather, in reading over both comrade Luxemburg's pamphlet, as well as in reading over her "Theses," it appears to me that she, and Lenin, were much closer on these tactical issues than you comrades of the ICC might think.

When in the "Theses" comrade Rosa Luxemburg says that the Second International has been effectively "smashed" by the new developments, and when, concluding therefrom, she argued for a new international organization of socialists, it's clear she's arguing for a Third International. This was exactly what Lenin was arguing for at the time in the diverse conferences of internationalist-minded socialists.

Additionally, in the "Theses," the use of the term, "smash," is never sufficiently explained. But nowhere is it indicated it means literally the physical "smashing" of working class people affiliated with such treasonous and betraying organizations as the German Social-Democratic Party-influenced trade unions. And, in fact, the pamphlet seems clear there is an importance in the issue of what revolutionary internationalist-minded socialists ought to take as our point of departure in the issue of tactics toward the trade unions.

In other words, it's clear that Rosa Luxemburg does not see the actual physical destruction of unions as automatically and of necessity following from her generally quite correct perspective on the overriding strategic tasks of the epoch of imperialism.

I think this is the key issue here -- this concept of the separation between the broad nature of the strategy for the epoch of imperialism, and, on the other hand, more specific tactical applications of same.

Rosa Luxemburg, as V. I. Lenin, and, yes, as L. D. Trotsky, derived out of the cataclysm of World War One a conception of the tasks STRATEGICALLY as being STRATEGICALLY tasks AIMING TOWARD WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.

But the notion that TACTICS would ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE BE EXACTLY THE SAME GIVEN THAT BROAD STRATEGIC CONTEXT for the epoch would have been properly seen as incorrect by all three of these communists.

The entire Third International emerged out of the cataclysm of World War One on the basis of their OVERRIDING conception of the tasks OF THE EPOCH as being based STRATEGICALLY on their notion that the epoch of imperialism was perceived by the Third Internationalists at the historical moment of its founding as an EPOCH OF WARS AND REVOLUTIONS, and AS AN EPOCH OF THE TRANSITION INTERNATIONALLY OF CAPITALISM INTO SOCIALISM internationally.

Decades ago, in, if my memory serves me, either in the later 1960s, or perhaps in the 1970s, a scholar named Helmut Gruber put together a collection of documents compiled by this scholar under the title, "International Communism in the Era of Lenin." Reading that collection of documents of revolutionary-internationalist-minded socialists who emerged out of what the "Theses on the Tasks of International Social Democracy" called the new epoch of imperialism, one again would get the unmistakable view that those militant socialist internationalists who emerged out of the treason to Marxist internationalism of the Second International ALL held to the overriding STRATEGIC conception of the tasks of the epoch as being ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL, but that THIS DID NOT MAKE THESE COMRADES VIEW IN EACH AND EVERY VERY MOMENTARY TACTICAL INSTANCE THE TACTICS TO BE FOLLOWED AS IDENTICAL.

The reason I think this is a crucial issue is, it touches on many positions held by the ICC on which I've long had questions, which include the ICC's perspective on unions, but also includes, more broadly, the ICC's perspective on what the Third International during the first four congresses of the Third International (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922) came to call the united front tactic.

I also think that organized international Trotskyist formations have contributed to unclarity on this issue as well. I am of the opinion that of all the international Trotskyist organizations that have sought to seriously and substantively "dig into" the archival materials of international communism in its founding in World War One as the Third International, the Spartacist current, a/k/a International Communist League-Fourth Internationalist, are probably most serious. But they, too, in their own "Declaration of Principles and Some Elements of Program," contribute to unclarity in this matter when they explicitly speak of the tactic of the united front as the "united front from above." I think that's a kind of making of issues of PROGRAM AND PRINCIPLE FOR THE OVERRIDING STRATEGIC TASKS OF THE EPOCH into what really is a TACTICAL issue whose APPLICATION DIFFERS AT EACH SPECIFIC INSTANCE.

So in a sense, I'm inclined to see a problem BOTH with the more serious ostensible Marxists of Trotskyist orientation, and, on the other hand, the serious Marxists of a left-communist orientation such as the ICC comrades. The problem, as I see it, with BOTH sets of ostensible comrades is, TRYING TO MAKE INTO ISSUES OF STRATEGY WHAT ESSENTIALLY AMOUNT TO ISSUES OF TACTICS.

Issues of STRATEGY refer to issues APPLYING TO THE ENTIRE EPOCH OF IMPERIALISM. I don't particularly see the difference in the ICC's characterization of the epoch of imperialism as the epoch of capitalist decadence and, on the other hand, the characterizations of Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, of the epoch as being the epoch of imperialism, and to me, the phrases are in de facto terms identical. I do NOT share the view of Jan Norden, formerly a long-time Spartacist, now with his own Internationalist Group of Trotskyists whom he leads, that the term, "decadence," is essentially a term of moral opprobrium, and not a materialist term. The linguistic derivations of "decay," and of "decadence," are essentially equivalent and identical, and so, to not see in the point made by people who use the term, "decadence," in the way the comrades of the ICC use it, is setting up straw men. Decadence CAN be used as some kind of essentially philosophically IDEALIST term of moralizing opprobrium, but that is NOT how the ICC or similarly thinking comrades use it, and someone HONESTLY COMMUNIST KNOWS that. Among other reasons, that's why I do not view Jan Norden or the Spartacists -- who never disavowed Jan Norden's view of the term, "decadence" -- are NOT honest communists. I do not think they are ANY KIND of communists.

But I DO think the issue I'm raising here of trying to make issues of tactics into issues of strategy, or, vice-versa, issues of strategy into issues of tactics, is a perpetual problem in arguments and debates of this kind among ostensible Marxist internationalists in the epoch of imperialism or epoch of decadence. And I think trying to make issues of tactics equivalent to issues of strategy is the key thing that informs wrongheaded notions.

In my view -- and I think what Rosa Luxemburg did after she and her comrades were released by the German Revolution of 1918 from prison more or less confirms this, particularly in the positions she took at the historical moment of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany in late 1918, -- Rosa did NOT equate "smashing" up of Second International-affiliated or influenced organizations with PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION OF WORKERS affiliated with such organizations.

RATHER, her concept was TACTICALLY to SPLIT such organizations, SETTING THE BASE OF SUCH ORGANIZATIONS AGAINST THE TOP OF SUCH ORGANIZATIONS, and WINNING THE BASE OF SUCH ORGANIZATIONS TO COMMUNISM.

In FACT, in the historical moment of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany in the last days of 1918, her PRIMARY debate WITHIN THE FOUNDING CONFERENCE of that movement was with the YOUNGER, LESS EXPERIENCED militants in the movement over the IMMEDIATE TACTICAL TASKS FACING THE MOVEMENT AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME.

It is my impression from what knowledge of the history of that moment I possess that the RANK-AND-FILE militants of the movement OUTVOTED her on the issue of the IMMEDIATE TACTICAL TASKS OF THAT MOMENT, and that, in fact, Luxemburg did NOT see the proposed effort at an insurrection of workers as TACTICALLY right.

I think, for instance, if one looks at what in history has come to be known as the "Spartacus Week" in Berlin, Germany, in January 1919, which was effectively the ABORTIVE effort of revolutionary-internationalist-communist-minded workers influenced by the Communist Party of Germany to take the power into their hands, one has to approach that movement as ROUGHLY equivalent to what in history has come to be known as the "July Days" of 1917 in Petrograd, Russia.

In BOTH instances, the MORE POLITICALLY EXPERIENCED communists, such as, in Petrograd, Lenin, and in Berlin, Luxemburg, held that trying to get a SUCCESSFUL rising of the workers AT THOSE SPECIFIC MOMENTS was PREMATURE. In BOTH instance, the more EXPERIENCED militants ADVISED AGAINST IT. But in the case in PETROGRAD, the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, i.e., the party led by Lenin, due to its LONG HISTORY of being essentially ORGANIZATIONALLY INDEPENDENT OF other LESS politically experienced or in some cases MORE OPPORTUNIST elements of the workers' movement (most especially the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party-Menshevik), was at least in THAT moment TEMPORARILY SUCCESSFUL in keeping the angry, militant ranks of Petrograd workers from moving AHEAD OF THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. In BERLIN, however, comrade Luxemburg's veteran communists were NOT successful, and so, she and her comrades felt COMPELLED IN THAT INSTANCE to STAY IN BERLIN AND, in effect, TAKE THE LEAD IN THAT FATALLY DOOMED ENTERPRISE, which, CATASTROPHICALLY FOR GERMAN COMMUNISM AND FOR THE WORLD INTERNATIONALIST COMMUNIST MOVEMENT OF THAT TIME, LED TO HER OWN DEATH AND THAT OF HER COMRADES, LIEBKNECHT, PIECK, BY HEART ATTACK MEHRING, LEO JOGICHES, AND OTHER COMRADES AT THAT TIME.

This situation demonstrated BEYOND A DOUBT that it is FATAL to EQUATE THE OVERALL STRATEGIC TACTICS FOR THE EPOCH with the TACTICS SPECIFIC TO EACH AND EVERY SITUATION.

The fact that in Petrograd's "July Days," Lenin RIGHTLY went into hiding meant he could LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY, a day which, tactically speaking, in the tumultuous social atmosphere of Petrograd in 1917, would NOT BE LONG IN COMING. It is true that as a result of the Bolsheviks' being SLANDERED AND LIBELED by the Kerensky bourgeois government as having "tried" to make a left-revolutionary "putsch" in the July Days, Trotsky was imprisoned at that moment in time. But even Trotsky himself in his "History of the Russian Revolution" and in some of his writings gave the impression of believing that EVEN HAD HE HIMSELF BEEN MURDERED BY THE BOURGEOIS COUNTER-REVOLUTION THAT SET IN AFTER THE JULY DAYS IN PETROGRAD, SO LONG AS LENIN SURVIVED, THE BOLSHEVIKS COULD EVENTUALLY IN THE NOVEMBER 7, 1917 EFFORT HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL.

But THAT WAS NOT THE CASE IN GERMANY IN BERLIN IN JANUARY 1919. The murders of Luxemburg, Liebknect, Pieck, Jogiches, and other veteran militant communists, as well as the death by heart attack of the old communist militant, Mehring, TAKEN TOGETHER was a SERIOUS DEATH BLOW to the prospects of NOT ONLY GERMAN communism, but INTERNATIONAL communism.

And the PROBLEM is, TRYING TO EQUATE TACTICS OF A STRATEGIC NATURE GOOD FOR THE EPOCH AS A WHOLE with TACTICS FOR EACH AND EVERY SITUATION. That sort of equation -- that sort of "making equivalents," if you will, out of that which is not necessarily equivalent -- is FATAL for revolutionary movements.

And it is my impression that, in at least SOME ways, there is that sort of MAKING EQUIVALENT of TACTICS THAT ARE GOOD STRATEGICALLY FOR THE CONTEMPORARY EPOCH, THE EPOCH OF IMPERIALISM, of WARS AND REVOLUTIONS that SUCCEEDED UPON the epoch of what the revolutionary internationalist-minded elements who emerged out of the old Second International's break-up to forge the Third International, referred to the PRECEDING epoch of "peaceable development" of world capitalism (leading up to World War One), with TACTICS FOR GIVEN SPECIFIC SITUATIONS. And I think that's a fateful and wrongheaded way of seeing this issue of tactics.

I think comrade Internationalist is PERFECTLY RIGHT to point to the INTERNATIONALLY UNITED OR INTERCONNECTED NATURE of capital IN THE EPOCH OF IMPERIALISM.

But WHAT EMERGES OUT OF THAT OBJECTIVE MATERIAL FACT FOR INTERNATIONALIST-MINDED REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNISTS is ANOTHER ISSUE. In Lenin's book, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," but more than that, in Lenin's numerous writings in the era of World War One, he argued that WHAT OBJECTIVELY FOLLOWED FROM THE NATURE OF THE EPOCH BEING AN IMPERIALIST EPOCH IN WHICH THERE WAS THIS INTERLOCK OF CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES WORLDWIDE was CONSTANT, UNENDING, REPEATED SHOCKS TO THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM AND CONSTANT, REPEATED, UNENDING CATASTROPHES AND CATACLYSMS, WARS, SOME BIG, SOME SMALL, SOME IN-BETWEEN, as WELL a revolutions of MANY different kinds.

The POINT here is that the NATURE OF THE IMPERIALIST EPOCH IS ONE IN WHICH THERE IS A CONSTANT and UNENDING SERIES OF DEVELOPMENTS that PUSH THE ENTIRE INTERNATIONAL CAPITALIST SOCIAL ORDER TOWARD PROGRESSIVELY GREATER, NOT LESSER, catastrophes OVER TIME.

THAT IS THE NATURE OF THE ENTIRE EPOCH of imperialism, or, as the ICC calls it, the epoch of decadence.

The INTERCONNECTION of capitalist enterprises, the INTERLOCK of capitalist enterprises INTERNATIONALLY does NOT make the entire capitalist system into ONE BIG UNIFIED MONOLITH, but VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, PUSHES EVERY CAPITALIST COUNTRY AND EVERY CAPITALIST RULING CLASS INTO CONFLICT WITH EVERY OTHER CAPITALIST RULING CLASS.

FURTHERMORE, it is RIGHT to say that capitalists AS A CLASS are NOT A COLLECTIVE CLASS IN THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS.

That is to say, they WILL UNITE AS A CLASS AGAINST AN INSURRECTIONARY WORKING CLASS, but BEYOND THAT, IT'S EVERY MAN (OR WOMAN) FOR HIMSELF (OR HERSELF).

The entire nature of capitalism's development is to SEEK TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS, with EACH AND EVERY CAPITALIST SEEKING TO DO SO AT THE EXPENSE OF EACH AND EVERY OTHER CAPITALIST, AND WITH EACH AND EVERY NATIONAL CAPITALIST RULING CLASS SEEKING TO DO SO AT THE EXPENSE OF EACH AND EVERY OTHER NATIONAL CAPITALIST RULING CLASS.

It is, as it were, a WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL.

The POINT of the INTERNATIONALIST COMMUNIST PROGRAM OF WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION is to ABOLISH THIS STUPID, HIDEOUS, DUMBASSED IDIOCY OF ANARCHY OF INTERNATIONAL CAPITALIST RELATIONS, and REPLACE IT WITH THE INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT ORGANIZED IN WORKERS' COUNCILS INTERNATIONALLY, CONFISCATING (EXPROPRIATING) THE INTERNATIONAL CAPITALIST RULING CLASSES OF ALL COUNTRIES, IMPOSING ON WORLD ECONOMY INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST PLANNING ADMINISTERED BY THE INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE WORKING CLASSES ORGANIZED THROUGH AN INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF WORKERS' COUNCILS OF THE WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES.

THAT'S THE POINT of why communists are communists.

But TACTICS DIFFER IN EACH AND EVERY SPECIFIC SITUATION because the NATURE of the imperialist epoch is an epoch MAKING FOR A KIND OF CONSTANT "INCONSTANCY," IF YOU WILL.

SPLITTING ostensibly working class socialist organizations of a NON-revolutionary kind is NOT THE SAME THING as PHYSICALLY SMASHING INDIVIDUAL WORKING CLASS HUMAN BEINGS.

That LAST notion is MORE APPROPRIATE FOR SUCH COUNTER-revolutionary REVERSIONS FROM revolutionary internationalist communism as FASCISM-NAZISM, or STALINISM, than it is for COMMUNISM. Luxemburg figured it was necessary to SPLIT OVER to the German Communists the MOST SIGNIFICANT FORCES of the older REFORMIST-influenced Second International-influenced workers of Germany, and THAT IMPLIED a perspective of SETTING THE BASE AGAINST THE TOP, NOT PHYSICALLY EXTERMINATING WORKERS AFFILIATED WITH THE OLD TREASONOUS ORGANIZATIONS.

In the SAME way, Lenin in Petrograd in the July Days of 1917 sought to WIN THE PEASANT MASSES OF THE COUNTRYSIDE over to the perspective of all power going to the soviets and Lenin RIGHTLY saw that as the PRECONDITION to the Bolsheviks acquiring the MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY, THE PRECONDITION for the Bolsheviks SUCCEEDING in a SECOND revolution in 1917.

I'm inclined to think that Lenin's split in 1902-1903 was RIGHT, and PREPARED his party OVER TIME for the EVENTUAL success they made in 1917. I'm ALSO inclined, in the SAME WAY, to think that LUXEMBURG SHOULD HAVE SPLIT MUCH EARLIER from the German SPD (Social-Democratic Party), as, had she DONE so, she might have had MANY MORE EXPERIENCED CADRES when the REVOLUTIONARY "CRUNCH" SITUATION was FINALLY upon the German working masses in 1918-1919, and WITH such more experienced cadres, she MIGHT have had a better chance at influencing the MASS MOVEMENT to NOT ACT PREMATURELY, BUT FIRST to WIN OVER THE COUNTRY, WHICH IS TO SAY, SUCCESSFULLY SPLIT THE BASE of the old German SPD FROM THE TOP, INCLUDING to SPLIT THE BASE of the German labor unions FROM THE TOP, and WIN THE MASSES TO COMMUNISM.

HAD THAT OCCURRED, there's a GOOD CHANCE the ENTIRE SUCCEEDING HISTORY OF THE WORLD WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY DIFFERENT -- AND, from a COMMUNIST perspective, MUCH BETTER AND MORE PREFERABLE.

Comradely,
Allan

The middle class kids of Tehran will get treated the same way they did when they demonstrated in support of Khatami. They will be persecuted and butchered. I would charge that the entire furor over events in Iran are precisely because of its class nature as a middle class run "people's" movement. Workers strikes and movements of the poor are routinely ignored in this world. Strikes in Egypt don't cause this level of furor precisely because they are proletarian and are therefore ignored by a capitalist world and an opportunistic middle class left who sees workers as nothing more than followers in the "people's" movements of the middle class. When workers take action they are invisible and ignored. There are actual class struggles all over the world. Why don't we argue instead about factory occupations in Korea, or China? Why aren't we arguing about the strikes in Egypt?

Marx's noted the venal role middle-classes play in betraying workers struggles as far back as his writings on the class struggle in France. When I see a "broad front" "people's movement" as a worker I know that the middle class leaderships of such movements will only stab me in the back.

As for struggling for democratic rights and liberties, that is just a labor of sysiphus that can never end or be resolved. The revolutionary bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century failed to bring about this fabled kingdom of heaven and "human rights".

If you struggle for something it should be to struggle for POWER--to crush capitalists and their system. This struggle in Iran, however, is about putting Mousavi in power, Iranian pro-Mousavi protestors might think differently but then they are being chumps. Revolutionaries have a duty to point this out. You are supposed to tell workers the truth whether they want to hear it or not. If you hold out false hopes, you aren't doing anyone a favor. In my own experience I know that every middle-class/petit-bourgeois led movement or protest only means workers will get the shiv afterwards. I'd rather support workers struggles and even participate in them when I can and be roundly ignored than follow a factional struggle of the bourgeoisie around hoping against all reality that there will be a political opening for workers.

Allan, you are right and these ICC clowns are wrong when it comes to the proper socialist stance about Iran.

Micah says that, "If Iran is attacked, revolutionary defeatism is the only revolutionary course of action!"

This is an utterly confused and stupid, non-Marxist, stance.

Lenin, carrying on the tradition of real Marxism, wrote: "To deny all possibility of national wars under imperialism is wrong in theory, obviously mistaken historically, and tantamount to European chauvinism in practice: we who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of millions in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., are invited to tell the oppressed peoples that it is “impossible” for them to wage war against “our” nations!"

This comes from Lenin's "The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution", which as a whole is a scathing indictment of the sort of bourgeois pacifism which the ICC tries to pass off as proletarian internationalism. I strongly suggest you read this work on marxists.org.

Marx himself was also in favor of national liberation. Read some of his correspondence on the topic of the First Indian War of Independence:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/india/index.htm

Lenin was simply mistaken on the question of national liberation and the role of supporting Two-Stageism in semi-colonial and colonial countries. Luxembourg's criticisms of his support for the 'Right of Nations to Self-Determination' have been backed up by the hindsight of history. The ICC makes the clear distinction between 'progressive' wars during the ascendancy of capitalism (in which capitalism was still expanding the market and acting as a progressive mode of production) and 'imperialist' wars and movements since 1914/WWI and the decadence of capitalism following the completion of the world market.

Under the 'Theory And Practice' tab at the top of the page is a link to two lengthy articles on the national question for semi-colonial and colonial ('Third World') countries and the legacy of National Liberation struggles. These texts completely expose the oppertunist and imperialist designs behind calls for National Liberation struggles and the right of nations to self determination/two stageism.

It's absurd to say that "Marx himself was also in favor of national liberation." This suggests that Marx viewed national liberation as some sort of universal, eternal right, which is absurd on the face of it and quite contrary to Marx and Engels's actual position. How else do you explain the fact that, for instance, Marx and Engels supported Austria -- hangman as it was of Italy -- against France in the Franco-Austrian War that began in 1859? For Marx and Engels, Austria was a bulwark against Russia, the supreme enemy of progress in Europe. Marx's support for "national liberation" was purely tactical. When it was in the interests of the working class, fine; when it wasn't, workers had no business supporting it.

Your statement that "Marx himself was also in favor of national liberation," based as it is on one instance of Marx tactically supporting national liberation, is akin to saying "Marx himself was also in favor of wars against Russia."

...does not really wash, because it takes Lenin out of his historical context. Yet another example of transforming the great names of the workers' movement into "inoffensive icons" as Engels put it - though in this case it's trying to transform Lenin into a supporter of obscurantist religious nationalism. We have written a piece on this very subject though concerned with the position on Iraq rather than Iran and it can be found here: http://en.internationalism.org/ir/119_cri.html

@ "Anonymous": No shit that Marx did not support a side in every war. He only supported the ones where one country was liberating itself from imperialism and the other was the imperialist aggressor. Are you stupid? (Apparently, yes).

July 5, 2010
Monday

Dear Marxist,

Thank you for your kind remarks about my letters to the ICC here of last year. It's only today I've gotten back to re-reading this material and your own response.

On Lenin's view and Luxemburg's view once again.

Lenin's call for the military defense of oppressed nations in their struggle against oppressor nations should not be confused with the notion that Lenin was some kind of nationalist. He was not. He hated nationalism. And he polemicized against it constantly, including in all his major polemics on the national question. He explicitly and specifically distinguished between defense of the right of nations to self-determination on one hand and, on the other hand, necessarily supporting exercise of a struggle for national rights in all instances. In fact, Lenin made the argument that defense of the right of national self-determination was rather similar to defense of the democratic right of married couples to divorce. Lenin argued that while in all instances, revolutionary socialists defend the democratic RIGHT of couples to divorce, that didn't mean that in EVERY SINGLE SPECIFIC CONCRETE INSTANCE, revolutionary socialists would necessarily ADVOCATE COUPLES DIVORCE.

Once again, what strikes me here about Lenin's position is, its tactical flexibility.

I think this was particularly borne out during the first four congresses of the Communist International of 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, when the very difficult subject of intermixed nations or intermixed peoples came up. The Spartacist-style Trotskyists, and their offshoots, Jan Norden's Internationalist Group, and Bill Logan's International Bolshevik Tendency, call such instances interpenetrated peoples. But the issue in the early congresses of the CI (Third International) in its pre-Stalinist period was really the same sort of thing.

In situations where imperialism has pushed diverse peoples of diverse ethnicities closely together to the point where they've gradually come to work and live together, arguing for the slogan of the "right of national self-determination" in such instances can potentially be genocidal to one of the two intermixed nations or peoples. In that situation, the early CI suggested the only realistic or feasible solution was, the united class struggle of labor of the two nationalities or two ethnicities together for common proletarian class aims against the bosses.

What's occurred in the past century is, international imperialism has, indeed, pushed innumerably diverse peoples into closer proximity with each other in many parts of the planet. Those who have most violently incited separation of intermixed nations or intermixed peoples have been nationalists -- ideological nationalists -- or in some cases, religious fundamentalists.

For instance, the rise of modern Palestine-Israel and the contemporary tragedy of Palestine-Israel, with two distinct ethnic groups contending for the same piece of real estate itself arose out of the tragedy of the Hebrew or Jewish people exterminated by Hitler's nationalist racist Nazi regime. Jews fled Europe seeking asylum particularly from the time of the November 9-10, 1938 "Kristillnacht" Nazi regime incitement of wholesale German national violence against Jews, and then as the regime's barbarism deepened during the imperialist onslaughts in Eastern Europe, Poland, and later, the Soviet Union, and Hitler in carrying out his imperialist assault against the Soviet Union, exterminated millions of Jews as part of his war aims in the Nazi Holocaust, Jews found the Western imperialists shut the doors to them, so they fled to Palestine.

The Zionists had ideologically never really had much support as a sect or faction among the Jewish people up till, that is, Hitler made the issue one of a simple "either-or": either get the hell out of Europe and as a defensive measure, form our own nation-state, or else stay in Europe and be exterminated. Most Jews had sought to assimilate and integrate into Germany prior to the rise of the Nazis, but you can't very well integrate or assimilate with anyone seeking to murder you, now, can you? It's from that kind of objective situation that Zionism's eventually gained adherence of Jews fleeing Hitler's mass murder machine. In that sense, the historically specific kind of nationalism called Jewish nationalism, or, more properly, Zionism, gained mass support in direct reaction to the rise of Hitlerism in Europe and its takeover of Europe and the East.

But nationalism has historically ALWAYS been INNATELY racist and INNATELY genocidal of other peoples and other nations and other ethnic groups, ALWAYS. The formation of the American capitalist nation-state with the First American Revolutionary War of National Independence of 1775-1783 was on one side, as Lenin in "Socialism and War" called it, the first modern national liberation war, but SIMULTANEOUSLY AND IRONICALLY AND DIALECTICALLY, it was a COUNTER-revolutionary war of EXTERMINATION of the NATIVE-American aboriginal peoples inside North America and SIMULTANEOUSLY with the SLAVE trade that exterminated upwards of 20 million black Africans, partly a crypto-exterminationist war against THEM as WELL fastening what Karl Marx called the system of "bourgeois feudalism" on the Southern states (That was the phrase Marx used to name that historically specific form of class exploitation and racial oppression called, North American slavery, bourgeois feudalism, and he called the Southern slaveholders a feudal bourgeoisie.).

So the rise of the American nation-state was SIMULTANEOUSLY "progressive" in the Marxist historical sense that it laid the foundation for the building of a united capitalist nation-state which, in being laid, also laid the basis for the formation of a modern American PROLETARIAT. But on the DOWN side, it was SIMULTANEOUSLY a GENOCIDAL development, as nationalist-inspired developments ALWAYS partly are in nature.

However, HITLERISM arose IN THE EPOCH OF IMPERIALIST DECAY or what the comrades of the ICC call the epoch of capitalist decadence. ADDITIONALLY, the FLEEING of the VICTIMIZED HEBREW PEOPLE OUT OF EUROPE to ESCAPE being EXTERMINATED by Hitlerism INTO PALESTINE and their FIGHTING TO FORGE THEIR OWN NATION-STATE occurred ON THE BACKS OF ANOTHER PEOPLE ALREADY RESIDING IN THE NEAR EAST, IN PALESTINE -- PALESTINIAN ARABIC PEOPLE.

In 1948, the Palestinian Trotskyists, an ETHNICALLY MIXED GROUP of revolutionary socialists containing BOTH workers and intellectuals of Jewish-Hebrew, AND Palestinian-Arabic, backgrounds, concluded that the ONLY PROGRESSIVE POSITION IN THE WAR TO FORGE THE ISRAELI STATE was, REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM ON BOTH SIDES, since BOTH the Zionist side AND the Arabic side, were EACH informed by RACIST NATIONALISM, and were THEREFORE INNATELY AND ORGANICALLY GENOCIDAL. The Palestinian Trotskyists called for an EGALITARIAN SOCIALIST FEDERATION OF THE NEAR EAST in the context of which BOTH the Palestinian Arabic people AND the Hebrew-speaking people could acquire FULL AND EQUAL NATIONAL RIGHTS.

In other words, the Palestinian Trotskyists of 1948, taking a leaf from the early congresses of the Communist International in the pre-Stalin period and their view on how to fight in situations of intermixed nations or intermixed peoples, came to a de facto programmatic conclusion that said exactly that, that ONLY the united labor struggle of both Arab and Jewish workers across ethnic lines would be the right position to take.

But AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME, the comrades of the 1948 Palestinian Trotskyists said that AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME, SADLY, the VICIOUSNESS of the INTERNECINE AND FRATRICIDAL STRUGGLE of the TWO CONTENDING RACIST BIGOTED NATIONALISMS having AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME MONOPOLIZED THINGS made it in PRACTICAL and DE FACTO terms virtually IMPOSSIBLE for revolutionary communists IN that situation to RAISE THIS AND HOPE TO GAIN A SUBSTANTIAL FOLLOWING ON EITHER SIDE for this perspective of united class struggle of both the Hebrew and Arab workers.

The nationalist bigoted racists of the time had monopolized things to such an extent that trying to bring to the forefront of the discussion and the struggles then occurring this eminently Marxist rationalist perspective would be very likely simply to get militants victimized or killed.

Basically, this sort of perspective has to be raised, but done so in a way that often is done in such a way as to UNDERMINE the racist bigoted nationalists and racist bigoted nationalisms incited by the various racist bigoted nationalists, and that sometimes means doing it in ways that circumvents such racist bigoted nationalisms, even resorting to underground or clandestine work, but doing so in a VERY, VERY, VERY CAREFUL WAY.

On oppressed nations.

The reason Lenin and Luxemburg maintained their comradeship DESPITE Luxemburg's opposition to Lenin's slogan of the right of nations to self-determination was, Lenin knew damned well that the standpoint from which Luxemburg had opposed the raising of the slogan of the right of self-determination for, for instance, Poland, came from Luxemburg's inside knowledge of the reactionary and retrogressive and racist bigoted role of Polish right-wing nationalists inside Poland in dividing up the Polish working class and trying to set workers against each other along nationalist lines. That kind of opposition to raising the slogan of the right of self-determination for Poland was rightly viewed by Lenin as coming at the question from a genuinely left standpoint, not a right opportunist nationally chauvinist or imperialist standpoint; Luxemburg was no national chauvinist and no imperialist chauvinist. I think to some degree, some of the stuff the ICC says about nationalism strikes a chord because so many of the so-called "leftists" have tended to disappear the CLASS division and the CLASS struggle in the NATIONAL struggle.

Also, I would add this.

I think it's probably right to say that in a de facto practical sense, Lenin came over in 1917 to Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution "on the ground" in terms of the actual practical tasks he saw the Bolsheviks as having to accomplish in 1917 in Russia, while on the party question, Trotsky came over to Lenin's standpoint in 1917. But the resolution of the question of all the diverse oppressed nationalities and ethnic groups of what Lenin had often called Russia's prisonhouse of peoples, tsarism, which the brief-lived bourgeois government could not solve, could only be resolved by the proletarian revolution leading behind it the peasant masses, or in Trotsky's phrase, the permanent revolution, the meshing of the fight for the rights of all oppressed nations with the socialist revolution. The meshing of the fight for democratic rights with the fight for proletarian socialist power is and always has been since Marx's coining of the phrase, "revolution in permanence," in 1850, the essence of what the permanent revolution is about, and that is why the word, "Marxism," and the phrase, "permanent revolution," are synonyms, and why the permanent revolution is therefore applicable everywhere, the Spartacists' counter-revolutionary anti-communist, anti-Marxist, revisionist position that the permanent revolution is NOT applicable everywhere to the contrary notwithstanding.

The permanent revolution meant the proletarian socialist revolution. That implied the class struggle of labor against capital. That in turn implied the resolution of ALL democratic rights issues was the proletarian struggle for state power EVERYWHERE. No communist would disagree with that statement.

But the first four congresses of the Communist International were meant to BREAK with the Second International's old notion of "peaceable transition to socialism" and the notion that capitalism had entered a period of peaceable and unending and non-crisis-riven or non-crisis-laden development peaceably into socialism. The first four congresses of the Communist International of 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, operated on the basis the epoch had QUALITATIVELY CHANGED with World War One (1914-1918), and probably actually somewhat EARLIER than that. BOTH Lenin's book, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," AND Rosa Luxemburg's book, "The Accumulation of Capital," were, each in its own way, an EXPRESSION of this view that the epoch GLOBALLY was QUALITATIVELY NEW.

But that did NOT mean that OLD QUESTIONS which had PERPETUALLY CONCERNED MARXISTS did NOT PERPETUALLY RE-ARISE IN THE NEW EPOCH AS THESE QUESTIONS HAD ARISEN IN THE OLD EPOCH PRECEDING the modern epoch of imperialism or what the ICC calls the epoch of global capitalist decadence (which to me is the same thing).

And in MY view, THAT was the PRIMARY difference between Lenin and Luxemburg. I think that in SOME KEY SENSE, Luxemburg's view really HARKED BACK to the OLD SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC view that "everything will be solved under socialism." That was, for instance, the important American left-wing socialist, Eugene Debs', view on the issue of the racial oppression of the black masses in America. And some of the American Communists who broke from the Socialist Party of Debs in 1918 and 1919 brought with them that Debsian view. They had to get some re-education on that issue when the issue of the racial oppression of the black masses in America became a topic of discussion at some of the early congresses of the Communist International. James Cannon was right when in his book, "The First Ten Years of American Communism: Report of a Participant," he said that Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev, brought the black question's importance home to American Communists in the early congresses of the Communist International.

The point here is, that was a BREAK from the old social-democratic PRE-World War One view of the Second International's "minimal-maximal" program that "everything will be solved under socialism," and more specifically, Debs' view that the Socialists have "nothing special to offer" the black workers in America. The early Third International countered that with the idea of transitional organizations that would intersect specially oppressed sectors of the proletariat, such as black workers in the U.S., or women workers, or in some cases, workers oppressed or discriminated against by nationality, ethnicity, or in similar ways. The point was NOT, however, to bring to such workers some watered-down version of only a compromised Marxist program that tried to disappear the hard class struggle edge of the program, but to do PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE, to bring to the diverse oppressed sectors of laboring people the SAME COMMUNIST PROGRAM ALL workers would have brought to them.

The concept of the division between the "minimal" program of the old Second International's social-democratic parties, and the "maximum" program of socialism, was now changed over so that in the early congresses of the Third International, a program that was a kind of transition belt between the PRESENT consciousness of the exploited class, and, on the other hand, the AIM of the CONQUEST OF POWER, was created. The Trotskyist transitional programme of 1938 did NOT originate with Trotsky and his group in the 1930s. It ORIGINATED in the Third International in the first four congresses of the Third International, 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922.

So while I appreciate Marxist's kind words about my position, I want it understood that there is, in some sense, a good Marxist "edge" in the notion that IN IRAN, Marxists must fight FOR THE CLASS STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS OF IRAN AND THE SMASHING OF THE IRANIAN REGIME. Additionally, the WORST thing Iranian workers can do is DISAPPEAR THEIR CLASS INDEPENDENCE AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE PROLETARIAN CLASS PARTY in some kind of OATMEAL MUSH of an Iranian "national" struggle against outside imperialisms like U.S., NATO, British, etc., imperialisms.

In the event of U.S., British, NATO imperialisms attacking Iran, or one of their satraps, such as the U.S. client state of Israel doing so, I think it is incumbent on revolutionaries to say, U.S., BRITISH, NATO IMPERIALISM, or ISRAELI SATRAP OF U.S. IMPERIALISM: HANDS OFF IRAN, OUT OF IRAN, IMMEDIATELY. But it seems that internationalist communists INSIDE Iran have to PURSUE THE CLASS WAR INSIDE Iran as the ONLY way of fighting BOTH against any outside imperialist attempt to subjugate their own country AND against ALL CAPITALIST BOURGEOIS WITHIN IRAN, theocratic and non-theocratic alike. The Iranian Marxists must fight for the permanent revolution -- the proletarian dictatorship in Iran based on elected workers' councils -- as the only way out of BOTH an imperialist attack on their country AND as the road forward for the liberation of the Iranian masses.

The TACTICAL issue is this: do Iranian communists direct their weapons AGAINST FOREIGN IMPERIALISTS attacking their country if that should happen, i.e., in the SAME direction as the Iranian GOVERNMENT might MOMENTARILY be doing? Marxists would have to answer, yes, but at the same time, Marxists would have to INTRANSIGENTLY WARN the Iranian proletarian masses to WATCH THEIR BACKS, NOT DO AWAY WITH THE CLASS INDEPENDENCE OF THEIR CLASS PARTY OR CLASS PARTIES, NOT SUBMERGE THEMSELVES IN CROSS-CLASS ALLIANCES WITH THE CLASS ENEMY IN IRAN, NOT ALLOW THEMSELVES TO DO WHAT THEIR ORGANIZATIONS DID IN 1978-1979 IN BEING SO OPEN AND FRIENDLY WITH THE MULLAHS THAT THEY SET THEMSELVES UP TO BE SLAUGHTERED BY THE MULLAHS. 1978-1979 was NOT an "Iranian Revolution." THAT IS A LIE. It was a COUNTER-REVOLUTION of ONE gang of counter-revolutionaries, the religious theocratic mullahs, against ANOTHER gang of counter-revolutionaries, the shah of Iran supported by the U.S. The so-called Iranian "left" BETRAYED the Iranian proletariat in 1978-1979. The lesson is, IRANIAN COMMUNISTS: MAINTAIN YOUR CLASS INDEPENDENCE, and NEVER TRUST ANY bourgeois elements, ANY reformist elements, ANY governmental elements, EVEN IF MOMENTARILY YOU TURN YOUR WEAPONS AGAINST THE SAME OUTSIDE IMPERIALISTS WHO MIGHT SEEK TO DOMINATE YOUR COUNTRY AS MOMENTARILY THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT MIGHT SEEK TO TURN ITS WEAPONS AGAINST.

THAT is the lesson of 1978-1979.

Comradely,
Al (Allan) Greene

"Marxist: No shit that Marx did not support a side in every war. He only supported the ones where one country was liberating itself from imperialism and the other was the imperialist aggressor. Are you stupid? (Apparently, yes)."
I guess Czechs were imperialist agressors against Austria in 1848 then, since Marx totally opposed their national aspirations (which, by the way, were quite muddled at the time, and had not yet crystallized around separatism).

Anonymous- You equate opposing national liberation with stupidity, and anti-Marxism. You remove the context of Marx's written works, and turn Lenin into some kind of flawless icon that every Marxist must worship at the alter of.

The history of national liberation and the two stageist/right of nations to self determination is completely seperated from Marx's support of progressive wars. Trying to link them is disingenous.

During capitalist expansion, wars were fought to expand the growing, ascendant mode of production that is capitalism to the rest of the globe. Marx supported the United States, the North, vs the Confederate States in the South, for precisely this reason. However, once capitalism circled the globe and became a world economic system, there were no more progressive wars. The dividing line is the First World War and the advent of decadence.

Two-Stageism says every feudal, semi-colonial and colonial region or nation must go through a democratic bourgeois revolution before it can undertake the socialist revolution. From this rationale, you get the notion that it is acceptable to support national liberation and third worldism (China with the KMT, Kemal in Turkey, etc) against the 'big imperalists'. However, Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution of 1905 which was put into practice in 1917 totally showed the bankruptcy of Two Stageism, and Luxembourgs polemic with Lenin outlined the fallacy of supporting national liberation and the right of nations to self determination as bourgeois, nationalist movements that put the workers at the disposal of their little national bourgeoisie (and often results in the outright massacre of the most class conscious workers as in China and Turkey).

Marx also hailed British imperialism's ravaging of India as producing "the greatest, and ... only social revolution ever heard of in Asia." Also (and I admit to finding this in the ICC's article "Communists and the National Question in the 19th century) Engels criticized an Egyptian uprising against British imperialism, saying, "I think we can well be on the side of the oppressed fellahs without sharing their monetary illusions (a peasant people has to be cheated for centuries before it becomes aware of it through experience), and to be against the English brutalities without at the same time siding with their military adversaries of the moment."

Also, I wrote the July 5, 2010 - 04:55 comment for which you called me, once again, stupid. It would be easier to tolerate such needless attacks if you would back them up with a more persuasive case for your position.

After 30 years of devotion in all kind of literature, including communist literature I have come to the conclusion that it is absurd to make a theory based on one or other kind of human and social behaviors. Marx was right in his one right, so was Hegel and Lenin---for much in the same way as reason the human consciousness is the slave of bodily desires in majority of cases---so, unless men learn to place the importance of others before themselves no socialism or just society can be possible---nor liberty and freedom ---so far no man in this planet, and more specifically, among those who preached socialism and social justice, live up to this ideal---in other words, it is absurd to idealize Marx or Lenin as they did not live up to the expectation of people or ideal society---the idolization of Marx and Lenin resembles the idolization of Jesus by Christian---let us not talk about their political theories---