Weekly Worker 444 Thursday August 22 2002
Letters
Anti-semitic attitudes
Ian Donovan’s reply to me on the issue of left anti-semitism is all over the place (Weekly Worker, August 1).
The issue at hand is whether it is acceptable that sections of the left display reactionary attitudes towards jews. Of course such attitudes are not direct parallels with racism of a fascist or bourgeois state kind. And of course they are not “outright”, as I put it in my previous letter. But they are unacceptable on the left. Comrade Donovan seems to think that because the Socialist Workers Party’s attitude to jews is not racist in the fascist or bourgeois state sense, it deserves no name. To give it a name, anti-semitism, is “hyperbole”. Hyperbole, he complains, allows the SWP leadership to portray our position as “from the right” instead of “from the left”.
I couldn’t care less whether my opposition to the SWP’s reactionary drivel on Israel/Palestine is left or rightwing criticism, as long as it’s right. ‘Hyperbole’ means (roughly) ‘exaggeration’. So his complaint is not that we falsely accuse the SWP of a form of anti-semitism, but that we overstate the point and use unwise words to describe it. Allow that. Allow that tactically we approach the issue too aggressively, run the risk of alienating SWP members, play into their leaders’ hands. Is the substantial point right or wrong?
Since comrade Donovan seems unable to address the simplest point without weaving irrelevant detail around it, it is probably unduly hopeful to expect a straight answer to this question. Thus, first he quotes me: “To compare even the worst crimes of ‘Zionism’ or the Israeli state with Nazi genocide ... is both wrong politically and as a meaningful comparison. Nothing Israel has ever done to the Palestinians is remotely comparable to Nazi genocide.” And he responds: “Unfortunately for comrade Bradley, the latter point could also be said of Nazi Germany itself in 1939, prior to the holocaust.”
Well, really. Israel is routinely compared to the genocidal Nazi state. The fact that other states are also less genocidal than genocidal Nazism is simply irrelevant. Israel is not being compared to Nazi Germany before the holocaust. But even if it were, the comparison would be ridiculous. Israel is racist and becoming more so. But it is still a million miles from Germany in the 1930s. By 1939, the date comrade Donovan picks, not only had Hitler crushed the workers’ movement, rounded up thousands upon thousands of militants and enacted laws against jews (they were well underway in 1934) and others - but the physical war against the jews was raging.
I accused the SWP of “double standards” regarding jews. To respond, as comrade Donovan does, that they’re also reactionary towards Irish protestants so the standards aren’t really ‘double’ is a bit peculiar. The double standards at issue here are quite specific. It’s not only comprehensive opposition to their collective rights, but all the holocaust parallels. Anti-semitism has very deep roots in our culture, and on the left sometimes you see variants of anti-semitic themes (conspiracies, and so on).
Of course hostility to jews is not worse than towards other groups, uniquely vile or whatever. The difference is that the implicit attitudes towards jews which exist on the left are not common towards other groups, loyalists notwithstanding. Taking issue with the word ‘outright’, comrade Donovan wants to know if I think the SWP are ‘unconscious’ pogromists. I find the sneering question bewildering. To make an inexact analogy: I am gay. Sometimes on the left I still encounter attitudes which seem to me somewhat homophobic, though never anyone who wishes me physical ill, as far as I know. Maybe the not-outright homophobes I encounter would ‘unconsciously’ like to see me beaten to a pulp. I don’t know. That strikes me as a matter for a psychoanalyst. What I do know is that even un-outright reaction is bad for a left that wants to change the world and eliminate oppression.
Sorry for ‘regaling’ your readers with an “anecdote” about an SWP teacher - though the complaint is a bit rich in the pages of the Weekly Worker. But comrade Donovan does not respond at all to the main point of the anecdote. If combating anti-semitism requires of us that we demonstrate our anti-Zionism first, as this person claimed, is a Zionist entitled to oppose anti-semitism? Or, as is strongly implied, does he or she deserve it?
Even if comrade Donovan is right that we in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty use words which are too nasty and are tactical idiots on this question, he needs to stop confusing an argument about the use of words with a political position. When he can do that, I’ll take more seriously the self-congratulation about ‘political honesty’.
Clive Bradley
AWL
Bordering excuses
The Weekly Worker/CPGB always reports on a meeting, but never gives its position on that meeting (‘Simplistic anti-imperialism and two states’, August 1). It does not run questions and answers, but leaves its own argument stone dead to the reader (just like reality TV - sic). Take the question of a ‘two-states solution’ for Palestine/Israel. You support this - but never tell your readers if this is a ‘programme’ or a solution to the crisis.
Do you believe that the workers of the world must unite and that workers, through revolution, can control the world - being the vast majority? If you agree with this, then please explain your two-states solution! Do workers from Israel and Palestine agree ‘borders’ based on capitalism and the pogroms against Palestinians since 1945 (when my dad was conscripted there).
What year do workers and the oppressed choose? Tell us! What borders do you want to contain Palestinians in? Would a pre-1967 border be OK? Or what? The oppressed Palestinians make peace with Israeli working class leaders - who determine the divisions of what was Palestine? Is that your position? If you subscribe to that, you fail to realise that revolution and socialism from below can recognise no borders. Tell me how can it be otherwise? If it’s in stages - tell us all how!
My dad was stationed in Palestine 1945-47. He thought, like so many working class troops from this country, that they were there to support the Palestinian homeland from Zionist terrorists. Now the Weekly Worker tells working class people like my dad it didn’t matter! For that’s exactly what a ‘two-states solution’ is about - it doesn’t matter about history and imperialism and Zionism!
My father was employed by the jewish community in London in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Even his employers detested the idea of ‘settlement’ in Israel. Why do you, a communist party, excuse Israel? Bottom line is - given that the working class of the Middle East must decide the future of the Middle East - come on and tell us how your working class ‘line in the sand’ works? Can we erect working class barriers then (one working class barrier and border against another)?
The Weekly Worker is a gossip sheet - it does no harm to me but it’s not doing history justice - and certainly not living up to my father’s want of equality for all. Tell us precisely where you stand. Or are you too reformist to tell?
Rupert Mallin
email
Mind-blowing
I really hope that the Weekly Worker spent as long criticising the ANC struggle against oppression and apartheid - including violent ‘terrorist’ tactics - and that it advocated separate states for distinct ethnic groups: whites and blacks. That would at least be consistent. It seems amazing to me that socialists should advocate political ‘solutions’ based on nationalistic/racial and religious divisions put in place by capitalist society.
Your spot-on analysis of the rise of islamic fundamentalism is also mind-blowing. To view fundamentalism as the seed of the devil, quite apart from its racist connotations (jewish and christian fundamentalism are equally regressive, but then they’re nice white folks), totally misses the role of fundamentalism in the anti-imperialist struggle and therefore how we should deal with it in the here and now.
Nick Dearden
email
Link solidarity
It is good that the Weekly Worker gave us a chance to hear from Palestinian and Israeli comrades in the interviews published (‘Two states, one struggle’, July 25).
One point concerning history I would query. The break-up of the Palestinian Communist Party was not just due to Israel and partition. The Soviet Union and communist parties supported partition of course, and the Israeli-jewish party included elements enthusiastic for a bigger Israel. But, more than this, for a long period the official Soviet and international line ignored the Palestinians, treating the Middle East conflict as between neighbouring states.
Palestinian communists were to join either the Israeli or Jordanian CPs, with the rationalisation that communist parties are delineated according to existing states. Even as the Palestinian movement grew and developed political differentiations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine were left to hold the banner of ‘Marxism’ (however questionable their version of it), and to enjoy some occasional eastern bloc aid, while the go-ahead was quite late for the re-formation of a Palestinian CP.
On the Alternative Information Centre in Israel, it has done some brave and vital work, but it is not the only “cross-border” link now. Ta’ayush, for instance, which organises convoys to break the occupation blockade, was an Arab initiative and could not operate without links across the lines.
I think the Israeli comrade is mistaken in saying they cannot condemn Hamas. Of course he is right to emphasise the prime responsibility of the Israeli rulers for driving desperate young Palestinians to extremes, and deliberately wrecking any ceasefire moves. In the past the Israeli authorities seem to have assisted the fundamentalists in preference to secular Palestinian forces. Now they use them as a pretext to attack all the Palestinian people.
As an Israeli, the comrade is right to focus on his own ruling class; but as an internationalist he is also entitled to condemn attacks which target ordinary working people, and do not advance the struggle; and to solidarise especially with those Palestinians fighting for the same future as himself.
I was also pleased to see Liz Hoskings’ article reminding us of the fanatical religious right in the west and its power and influence (‘our own bin Ladens’ Weekly Worker August 1).
Two things I would add. First, the growing link between US christian fundamentalists and rightwing Zionism. The idea of a ‘return’ to Zion in christian theology, as well as material designs on the Middle East, predates the modern Zionist movement. At the height of the cold war, when former US president Ronald Reagan spoke apocalyptically of the “wars of Gog and Magog”, even some Zionist leaders got the wind up.
They realised rightwing American preachers envisaged Israeli expansionism leading to a nuclear Armageddon to speed the Second Coming, with all the jews converting to christianity for their salvation. Israeli leaders now are not averse to an alliance with such fanatics. There is a christian-backed movement to send out more settlers, and it is supported in the Bush administration by Donald Rumsfeld (ironically, some Arabs vainly hoped the Republicans would be an improvement on the Democrats because they didn’t need jewish support).
The other issue is New Labour’s record in tailing such reactionary forces at home as well as abroad. Following the pledge to back ‘faith-based’ education, Tony Blair has praised a Gateshead school run by creationists, who dismiss Darwin and teach the literal Bible story of creation as science! Is this the future for your kids’ education? It is time the left faced up to our enemy on this front too.
Charlie Pottins
Jewish Socialists’ Group
Christian Taliban
‘Our own bin Ladens’ was an excellent article - I only wish it could have been longer. The subject of fundamentalist religion in the United States would fill at least 1,000-plus pages.
I would only like to add one thing. The Southern Baptist church spoken of in the article does indeed promulgate its sick agenda in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana, but its biggest and most powerful stronghold is in the state of Texas where I, unfortunately, live. The big money that supports the church comes from here and the majority of the decision-making and policy also comes from Texas.
These idiots have actually managed to legislate large sections of the Dallas metro area ‘dry’ - that is, alcohol-free: no sales, etc - in accordance with their religious beliefs. How many more of their beliefs will they pass into law, eh?
When people talk about the mayor and city council, I always cynically remind them that north Texas is not run by any city government, but by the christian Taliban.
James Hardwick
Texas
Rotten SSP
In his article on the Scottish Socialist Party, Jack Conrad comprehensively - and, it has to be said, at times eloquently - exposes the national socialism of the SSP (‘Scottish mists and Polish echoes’ Weekly Worker August 1).
Given the politics of the SSP, the fact that it may have “won a real hearing from sections of the working class” is surely a negative political development to be opposed rather than any reason to join the SSP on an opportunist ‘numbers game’.
After reading Jack’s analysis the only reasons I could think of for Marxists having anything to do with this rotten outfit would be: (a) if there was some genuine indication that the grouping as a whole was evolving to the left; or (b) if there was a possibility of splitting the SSP and taking away a politically decent group of comrades. Neither of these possibilities are mentioned in the article.
Towards the end of Jack’s article there is a cut-out coupon to, er, join the SSP! Now, comrades, have I missed something important or have you done so?
Ted Talbot
email
Liberating SSP
Thanks for that, Jack. I must say I disagree entirely.
Imagine is aimed at people who are on the fringes of politics, not at people like yourself. I think the names mentioned in your article are perfectly aware that socialism is not possible in one country. That’s why the SSP is part of the European anti-capitalist left and is forming strong links with groups in France, Portugal and Italy, to name just three.
The creation of an independent Scotland, even on a non-socialist basis, surely is a step forward for the working class, merely because it attacks Brit/US imperialism. As with any national liberation, there will be an opportunistic bourgeois element. However, the fight for an independent socialist Scotland is a rallying call to show that something different is possible.
Paul Stewart
email
Irish Pilsudski
Just a question: does Conrad believe that James Connolly was the Irish equivalent of Pilsudski?
Ed Yoo
email
Greater Northumbria
Establishing Hadrian’s Wall as the frontier? Actually the wall runs from North Shields to the Solway Firth, so not just Morpeth and Blyth would be annexed, but also Newcastle itself. It’s not that Northumbrians would be claimed as ‘unconscious brother Scots’, but lowland ‘Scots’ being reunited with their fellow Northumbrians. Northumbria would once again spread north to Edinburgh and include all the lowlands.
We have long ago joked in Newcastle that the wall was built too far north and would be happy if we rebuilt it somewhere south of Durham. We would have to come to some confederated, autonomous arrangement for Northumbria within the Scottish Soviet Republic, but since we have shared a brewery with these folk for decades, that shouldn’t be a problem. I thought Wor Willie was a Geordie until I was 17.
Mind you, there’s a canny few ‘Geordies’ would welcome annexation by Norway, who are also distant relatives, rather than continued rule from doon sooth.
Dave Douglass
Exiled Northumbrian
Middle class SA
Regarding your article, ‘Foot challenge to New Labour’, again we see the Socialist Alliance claiming that this election may see a breakthrough (Weekly Worker August 1).
How many times have we heard this and seen the end result as nothing more than a complete failure? After the recent nine-vote joke in Tower Hamlets, when will the SA learn that they have nothing to offer the working class because they operate on a middle class agenda? What excuses will be given this time, I wonder?
Neil Stanton
email
Fischer mode
Is it necessary to call several comrades idiots and to use the term ‘shit’ in order to make your point (‘Centralism and the SA’ Weekly Worker August 1)? This seems to be the normal mode of operation for Mark Fischer. I would not join a party that encouraged this sort of journalism even if I did agree with you politically.
Yours anarchistically?
Phil Pope
email
Dear Leader
When the Soviet Union went, we were told this was the end of history and communism and how superior capitalism was, etc. Well, over a decade later, all I can say is what a miserable failure they are. The US dominates the world economy. It is the strongest military power on the planet, possessing 8,000 nuclear warheads. British imperialism is its willing ally.
And what do we have in this country? The Soviet Union built an infrastructure that defeated the Nazi war machine in 10 years, at a time when the rest of the world had a slump. The privatised Railtrack can’t repair the tracks in spite of being given billions and a highly skilled labour force.
They can’t guarantee a decent pension for workers when they retire. Millions upon millions are excluded from the labour market through the uneven development of the economy, lack of childcare facilities and adequate training, poor pay and highly repressive conditions in the workplace. Yet the fat cats continue to get enormous payments for messing up the economy.
The tabloids and the television foist strange tales and scandals all the time about the people this system glorifies and make ordinary people seem like failures because they aren’t glamorous or rich. Thanks to my Leninist education I can see through all the hype and ignore it all. But what of the masses? What does it do to them?
The characters we are told to idolise are quite frankly not of the Lenin or even Trotsky type. If I had to choose between Lenin and the Blairs, Beckham, Chris Evans and all the other characters that are supposed to be our national heroes because they are rich and famous, I have no doubt who a sane and intelligent person would choose. I can now understand why there was such heavy censorship in the Soviet Union. The bourgeoisie and their allies have all the power and tricks to keep the proletariat from waking up.
Our class has plenty of heroes. We should forever be publicising with vigour these people who are the complete opposite of the bourgeois heroes, so that working class people know who to adulate and who to scorn.
As a friend of North Korea, I have had to put up with a lot of rubbish about our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Well, when it comes to possessing intelligence, wisdom, political skill and acumen, he is no match for the all the leaders the rich and powerful countries can display. All the great communist leaders of our time have written volumes of worthy political material, all from their own minds. I don’t think we can say the same about our wonderful bourgeois leaders.
Paula Jenkins
Essex
Mass strike
In reply to comrade Ian Donovan, let me deal first of all with the charge of syndicalism (‘Utopianism or materialism’ Weekly Worker July 25).
Syndicalism is the ideology of the proletariat at the embryonic stage of its development. It does represent a genuinely revolutionary tendency, although a simple truth is lacking - the complete mastery of the laws of social development, which can only come from Marxism, is the prerequisite to destroying the class enemy.
It can, however, be agreed that the “content and programme of syndicalism [does indeed form] a dangerous long-term threat to the victorious outcome of the proletarian revolution and to the consolidation of the future dictatorship of the proletariat” (Mike Baker). Of all the camps within the revolutionary proletariat it is towards the syndicalists that Marxists must exert their utmost effort at “instilling a scientific understanding of the objective laws of social development in general and of the proletarian revolution and its outcome, communism, in particular” (ibid).
I, contrary to what comrade Donovan will have you believe, am not a syndicalist. My conclusions come solely from scientific socialism.
Comrade Donovan shies away from using the mass/general strike because “the bourgeoisie will react by means of some sort of political manoeuvre”. He then quotes two examples - Britain in 1926 and post-World War I Germany. He is fully correct in using Britain as an example of “rotten misleadership of the working class” when the TUC failed to back the general strike. In answer to this, it has to be one of the CPGB’s roles to ensure that this does not happen again.
With regard to the choice of post-World War I Germany, comrade Donovan is correct in that the workers’ councils were born from “mass semi-insurrectionary strikes”, yet he is wrong to state that they failed to take power themselves. The political power remained in the hands of the bourgeoisie because “the workers’ councils could only eliminate themselves as their organisational form contradicted their limited political and social goals. It was the subjective unwillingness to realise socialism by revolutionary means which accounted for the decay and finally the forced destruction of the [German] council movement” (Paul Mattick).
That is to say, the proletariat were not themselves advanced enough consciously to accept the need for communism. They gave up their momentarily won political power in favour of the deceptive evolutionary path of German social democracy. This was no bourgeois political manoeuvre, as comrade Donovan believes, but the failure of the proletariat themselves.
In my original letter I stated that to achieve socialism the proletariat must engage in a general strike, a term I use interchangeably with the term ‘mass strike’ (July 11). Comrade Donovan misunderstands the mass strike and its role in the proletarian revolution. It is through the mass strike that the revolution is realised, it is due to the mass strike that the worker evolves rapidly from a wage slave to a revolutionary. It serves to awaken the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat en masse acting as a unifier: “The economic and political factors in the period of the mass strike merely form the two interlacing sides of the proletarian struggle, and their unity is precisely the mass strike. The mass strike is inseparable from the revolution” (Rosa Luxemburg).
As opposed to the economic and demonstrative strike, which is easily planned, the mass strike is a masterpiece of proletarian insurrectional spontaneity. Rosa Luxemburg in her book The mass strike states the following, which is of maximum theoretical importance: “The mass strike is not artificially ‘made’, not ‘decided’ at random, not ‘propagated’, but it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability.” The revolution and the mass strike are one and the same. The strike furthermore is the manifesto of the proletariat.
Comrade Donovan runs scared from the general/mass strike because it will offend the ruling class, because it “poses point blank to the ruling class: Who is the master of the country? Who will prevail?” If he is scared that these questions are to be asked - and they will be - why does he sit in the Marxist camp, for we know that revolution is necessary and historically inevitable?
Why comrade Donovan has me equating the economic or political power of the proletariat with the economic or political power of the capitalists I have no idea. In my letter I state: “Political power is determined upon the pattern of ownership of the productive instruments, so those who own the instruments hold the dominant political power, hence the ‘executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’.” This, I feel, explains that as the bourgeoisie hold the dominant political power they therefore own the productive instruments and indirectly the labour of the proletariat.
Capital is the economic power that dominates everything in bourgeois society, hence the present state is a bourgeois state. Wage labour produces the wealth that rules it (capital), the power hostile to it and, as long as the worker produces his output as capital, the capitalist shall reproduce the worker as a wage labourer. The further fact compounding this domination by capital is that, as long as the wage worker is a wage worker, his lot is wholly dependent upon capital and economic strikes do not change this.
Hence the proletariat is neither (a) a wielder of economic power nor (b) equated to the capitalist in terms of either political or economic power (I have never stated this to be so). Furthermore a vital theoretical bolt has been tightened, that to change capitalism the relations of production and distribution must change also. They must be torn asunder via revolution.
Comrade Donovan’s belief that “money is an economic form that withers away when scarcity itself withers away” is problematic on one front yet it contains some element of truth. The truth is that, yes, when scarcity becomes negated, so no money will be in existence. However, the problematic element is taking this as a totality. No exchange is possible without a division of labour, in addition to the fact that the “division of labour and private property are identical expressions” (Marx). Then we see also that there shall be no exchange without private property. Under socialism the productive forces become social property, so private property is forced out of existence and labour certificates that are non-circulating negate money (see Critique of the Gotha Programme).
It is the necessary function of the workers’ dictatorship to begin the negation of money. State socialism, however, does not allow money’s negation, owing to the fact that production under the state socialist system necessitates distribution to be based on exchange value and therefore money remains the medium of exchange.
The purpose of my letter was twofold. Firstly, Marxism’s scientific study of society has shown us that “the totality of relations of production constitutes the economic structure, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure”. Therefore is it not the role of the revolution to alter the economic structure and therefore take economic power, thereby establishing the real foundation for the workers’ political superstructure?
Secondly, to explain why we must not go down the Bolshevik road, believing it to be the scientific outcome of capitalism, for it is not. In 1921 in Russia the Workers’ Opposition demanded workers’ involvement in factories, etc - as opposed to state control and ownership, as was the case. They were gagged by the party and suppressed. Compare this to Friedrich Engels’s demand of “possession of the means of work - raw materials, factories, machinery - by the working people themselves”.
Richard Sherratt
email
‘Regime change’ colonialism
If it was not for the horrific events of September 11 2001, and the peculiarities of the current rightwing administration in the US, one could not have believed that two years into the 21st century there would be a need to argue against what is after all a colonial concept, ‘regime change’ in Iraq , Iran or anywhere else.
Yet the US agenda for the region and polarised reactions to it are part of contemporary discourse and some sections of rightwing opposition against two dictatorial regimes, Iran and Iraq , have discussed little else over the last few months. As far as Iran is concerned, if the euphoria of various royalists is understandable, be it deplorable, a more worrying phenomenon is the enthusiasm of some so called ‘democrats’ to pave the way for ‘regime change in Iran’ by presenting themselves as the ‘rational’ alternative capable of delivering the ‘reformist’ faction of the current islamic regime to discussions designed to appease a warmonger US president.
A recent statement signed by some ex-leftists, many associated with Majority Fedayin (in its various forms and factions), is by far one of the most deplorable political statements of recent times, regarding Iran’s political future. The very same people who supported military invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, the very same people who applauded Khomeini’s savage attacks against the Iranian working class and national minorities in the early years of the islamic regime as signs of its ‘anti imperialist’ stand and the very same people who over the last five years have praised the ‘reformist’ faction of the islamic regime and its president as the saviour of the nation - in other words the familiar defenders of ‘counterrevolution’ from above - have united once more to disperse ‘wisdom’ and advise their friends and, one presumes, ‘fellow democrats’ in the islamic regime to save the ‘nation’ by appeasing the US.
In a five-page statement, which can be interpreted as defence of ‘regime change’ - be it with the support of ‘reformists’ within the islamic regime - the signatories encourage sections of the Iranian regime to open a ‘dialogue’ with the US administration in order to avert the threat of military action by accepting the US’s terms for ‘better relations’. The statement makes a number of assumptions that should be addressed first and foremost:
(1) That the Bush administration is genuinely in favour of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the Middle East and the supposed ‘war against terrorism’ is therefore justified! A hypothesis which most people - Iranians, Europeans, as well as many Americans - would consider an insult to one’s intelligence. In Iran and Iraq ‘regime change’, as in Afghanistan, has more to do with US geopolitical, economic interests than the ‘defence of democracy’.
(2) The assumption that anyone in the current US administration has any intention of ‘resolving’ conflict. The political statements of Bush advisors in recent weeks make it clear that this administration is adamant on waging war, irrespective of any concession by dictators in Iran or Iraq. Most observers agree on the compelling internal reasons for the current posturing in US foreign policy:
(a) as a means of diverting attention from the economic crisis and the scandals surrounding major corporations such as Enron and Worldcom, not to mention the implication of the US president and his vice-president in these scandals;
(b) the pivotal role of the ‘war on terrorism’ to allow astronomic rises in the military budget at a time of economic recession.
(3) The assumption is that the ‘reformist faction’ within the islamic regime is either capable or willing to democratise society, yet the experience of the last five years is testimony that the ‘reformists’ within the state, all of whom maintain their allegiance to the fundamental principles of an islamic state with it numerous unelected leaders and organs, a state that legitimises daily interference of religion into every aspect of the social and political life of its citizens, is incapable and indeed unwilling to ‘reform’ even the most superficial aspects of this medieval regime. It is unlikely to respond to preconditions necessary for such a dialogue, as demanded by the US: ie, an end to Iran’s support for Palestinian and Lebanese groups. This aspect of Iran’s foreign policy remains its one and only claim to be ‘radical’, however shallow and irrelevant such claims might be, and it is unlikely that anyone in power in Iran could possible contemplate such a change.
(4) That discussions between a superpower and a third world religious dictatorship, facing the largest secular opposition of its lifetime, could hold ‘positive discussions’ which would ‘benefit’ the Iranian people. No-one in their right mind would argue against ‘political relations’ between nations. However, illusions in Iranian reformists should be exposed in all their aspects.
Workers Left Unity
email
