What will bring calm to the violence in Iran?

[RSS News]

Iranian protests have sparked overnight clashes in Tehran. What will bring peace to the situation?

(Feed provided by BBC News | Have your Say (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm))

[h0m0revolutionary]

Uni students have today walked out of their classes right across Iran. Workers in Tehran hospital and Bus Workers Syndicate have downed their (metaphorical) tools.

The days of the regime is over. Now let's help them in toppling the whole Islamic Republic. Then we'll see peace.

[Canadian Red]

They want to see a government that isnt run on religious ignorance. Now is the time they will fight for freedom. All power to 'em.

[Comrade Anarchist]

Never b/c the goal of this "revolution" is to topple the religious government for a slightly more moderate leader. As long as a government exists it will use their religious beliefs for its own end. To replace the president and to do away with the ayatollah will not create peace just create a better government, which will still be oppressive.

[Winter]

Never b/c the goal of this "revolution" is to topple the religious government for a slightly more moderate leader. As long as a government exists it will use their religious beliefs for its own end. To replace the president and to do away with the ayatollah will not create peace just create a better government, which will still be oppressive.

Sure, but this is a step in the right direction.

Once they shed the beliefs of theocracy the people will be able to develop new ideas and rediscover ideas that their government may have kept hidden from them.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sure, but this is a step in the right direction.

Once they shed the beliefs of theocracy the people will be able to develop new ideas and rediscover ideas that their government may have kept hidden from them.

If anything, it is a step in the wrong direction.

Replacing an extremist theocratic dictatorship with a more moderate theocratic Islamic Republic based on 'liberal democracy' will simply ameliorate the oppressed masses and if anything reduce their revolutionary and class consciousness.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If anything, it is a step in the wrong direction.

Replacing an extremist theocratic dictatorship with a more moderate theocratic Islamic Republic based on 'liberal democracy' will simply ameliorate the oppressed masses and if anything reduce their revolutionary and class consciousness.I don't think there's been a real uprising in history that won and then led to complacency.

Complacency or demoralization usually happens after a popular movement has been defeated (internally through bad politics or leadership or from external repression - usually a combination of both).

If a popular revolt topples the government - at this point, yes a moderate regime will be the most likely outcome - people will not be content to let bygones be bygones and forget about the social issues that led to this revolt in the first place. Contrary to what some anti-revolt left groups and the US establishment claim, this revolt is not just a result of discontent with one particular PM. There are deep social problems including a highly educated workforce with few job prospects in Iran and so replacing one leader with a more moderate one will not, in the long run, solve the issues facing the country.

[Luisrah]

If anything, it is a step in the wrong direction.


In the walk for socialism, probably.

But we also care about how the people live.
That's just like wishing that fascism to make another appearence, because it would cause discontent on the people, and it could lead to a revolution.

[h0m0revolutionary]

Replacing an extremist theocratic dictatorship with a more moderate theocratic Islamic Republic based on 'liberal democracy' will simply ameliorate the oppressed masses and if anything reduce their revolutionary and class consciousness.

Immediate gains can and should be fought for in the here and now. Your rhetoric might sound radical, but what you;re essentially supporting here is theocracy with the hope the oppression the Iranian state so likes to deliver will be enough to radicalise the masses.

This is flawed on several grounds:
1) That oppression doesn't exist only in text books and in the abstract - it's painfully real. Our comrades are being massacred in their thousands by this regime. We owe it to them to aid them in their plight. Not abandon them.

2) LGBTQ individuals, feminists, secularists and progressives of all stripes are murdered by the theocratic regime. We have a duty to support Iranians in putting an end to the regime that causes that bloodbath.

3) Many Iranian comrades visibly want something more than a mere liberal democracy, we should echo their concerns and support our comrades as much as possible. As opposed to by-proxy support for a barbarous regime in the vague hope continued oppression will aid class consciousness.

4) We should be able to win over the class to revolutionary politics without having to rely on pointing out that the bourgeoisie is oppressive. If you'd rather Iran had the theocracy it does than a democratic state enshrining minority and democratic rights, because such a 'democratic' state dissuades revolution, then I hate to imagine your solution to working class struggle in the first world.




If a popular revolt topples the government - at this point, yes a moderate regime will be the most likely outcome - people will not be content to let bygones be bygones and forget about the social issues that led to this revolt in the first place.

Exactly. We might not support the form some of the uprising is currently taking in Iran, and we absolutely want it to go further. But if/when a new (possibly liberal democratic) regime consolidates power in Iran. Our opposition to any Iranian ruling class doesn't just end.

And we continue, as before, to support workers revolution in that country, and the world over.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It is a highly flawed analysis to consider that a 'liberal democratic', yet still theocratic and reactionary, 'revolution' in Iran will improve the material situation of oppressed Persians at all. It will merely enshrine in law their theoretical rights, and by the use of multi-party elections and 'democratic' rhetoric distract oppressed Iranians from the real issues.

I am normally on the side that you take - that of making real-life gains and understanding that Socialist analysis is not an abstract concept but a reality in itself -, however, as much as I despise the brand of extremism Khameini and his clan have implemented since 1979 (and please do not again suggest that my opposition to the bourgeois, moderate, Capitalist backed religious reactionaries in Iran means I support an extremist theocracy, we both know that is petty and untrue), I see no reason to believe that regime change will emancipate the workers in the short to medium term. Worse still, it will have an adverse effect in nullifying, at least in the medium-term period, their revolutionary consciousness.

[h0m0revolutionary]

It will merely enshrine in law their theoretical rights, and by the use of multi-party elections and 'democratic' rhetoric distract oppressed Iranians from the real issues.

No, it will also stop the death of thousands of our comrades.


I see no reason to believe that regime change will emancipate the workers in the short to medium term. Worse still, it will have an adverse effect in nullifying, at least in the medium-term period, their revolutionary consciousness.

Oh absolutley. Nobody here is suggesting an exchange of ruling class will aid the workers movement substantially.

But you speak of diversions, isn't the greatest distraction to the workers movement in Iran at the moment the fact they can't organise, they have no right to association, the fact they're killed/exiled for their leftist leanings?

[MarxistLeninistMaoist]

US intervention.
yeah USA USA USA.
fucking fox news makes me mad

[Drace]

A revolution.