Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction

[fredbergen]

Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction
Workers Vanguard No. 229, 13 April 1979.

When mullah rule was established in Iran in early 1979, the vast bulk of the Western left actively supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power. Virtually the only group that refused to bow to the Islamic reactionaries was the Spartacist League, to which the League for the Fourth International traces its origin and from which founding cadres of the LFI came. At that time, when the SL stood on the program of revolutionary Trotskyism, its newspaper, Workers Vanguard, published the following important article. Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction (http://www.internationalist.org/iranandleft7904.htm)

See also Mass Protests Rock Iran: No to All Wings of the Mullah Regime (http://www.internationalist.org/iranmassprotests0906.html).

[Intelligitimate]

While I don't like the line of the Sparts, they always seem to have at least a consistent internal logic to their arguments. There are a lot of gems from this article. Take this one:



For opportunists it is unthinkable that there could be a reactionary mass mobilization against a reactionary regime. Yet history does offer examples of reactionary mass movements. Adolf Hitler organized an indubitably mass movement which toppled the Weimar Republic. In the U.S. in the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was a dynamic growing organization capable of mobilizing tens of thousands of activists in the streets.


The experience of German fascism has had too shattering an impact on the memory of the left for our reformist/centrist opponents to deny the possibility of reactionary mass movements based on the petty bourgeoisie.This seems to be essentially the case now. Much of the so-called Left now doesn't seem to realize this. Even a cursory glance at the leadership and the class forces at work, and their demands, indicates this is a reactionary mass movement against a reactionary regime. The difference is today is that the positions are basically reversed: Mousavi and Rafsanjani represent a push back towards Shah-like politics, in the sense that Iran will be more open to Western foreign policy concerns and Western economc domination (the veil isn't going anywhere, nor any of the other barbarisms associated with the current regime).