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*Two months ago, myself and a group of us sent an open letter <https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/12/02/open-letter-to-code-pink/> to Code Pink regarding their planned visit to Iran. We got a reply <https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/02/20/codepink-replies/> from Medea Benjamin, to which we replied. Since then, Code Pink did make that visit and their reporting <https://www.codepink.org/day_3> on it was nothing but a cover-up for that repressive regime. This has sparked off a debate among some. That debate has included a letter from a Professor Stephen Zunes, who was part of the delegation. Here is my comment trying to draw a wider lesson from this fiasco:* I think the position of those like Stephen Zunes and Code Pink can be a "learning moment". As we know, it's not that different from those on the left who support Assad, or for that matter those who uncritically support Maduro in Venezuela. There are some real differences. For one, while the Maduro regime is repressive, it has not descended anywhere near to the level of Assad or even of Rouhani in Iran. Another key difference is that in the case of Assad, US imperialism actually supports him whereas it does not support the Venezuelan or Iranian regimes. What ties them all together is this: Their principle ally is Russian imperialism. What has happened to the left, including but not only the socialist left, is that it has completely lost sight of the class struggle inside the former colonial world. It has accepted that the working class in that part of the world is merely the object, rather than the subject, of history. Where did this view come from? First of all it came from the position of the bureaucracy in the old Soviet Union, as expressed by Stalin. For them, the working class throughout the world was merely a pawn in the conflict between the Soviet bureaucracy and Western, mainly US, capitalism/imperialism. The most clear expression of this was the support that Stalin gave for the formation of the racist State of Israel. He saw an independent Israel as weakening British imperialism; what happened to the Palestinian people didn't matter. In addition, we have seen the long term trend of the weakening of the working class and its organizations, including in the US. A part of that process has been the strengthening of the grip of a conservative and self-serving bureaucracy over the unions. Together with the anti-Communism that arose in the post WW II period, this tended to alienate most socialists from the working class. The result was that they lost any real organic connection with the working class at home, and they were all driven together into a "left ghetto" where the ideas of Stalin tended to dominate. Even the supporters of Trotsky allowed those ideas to enter into their thinking. Linked to those ideas were and remain the ideas of the liberals - that issues such as "peace" are moral abstractions. That's why Code Pink could take that silly position of "understanding between nations" and completely ignore class interests, the working class, or the specially oppressed. Having taken up this abstract, moralistic position, they now are unwilling to reconsider. And so, the "peace and justice" advocates as well as all too many socialists, see Russian imperialism as the only force that can stand up to US imperialism. The working class doesn't exist as an independent force, in their eyes. In relation to this, we have to consider that Putin is playing a role similar to that of the old Tsar. In the latter case, the Tsar was the leader of the "holy alliance" that sought to bring together all the monarchist and feudal powers in Europe to combat the rise of liberal democratic ideas. Today, Putin and his agents - especially Aleksander Dugin - are bringing together the forces of chauvinism, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, misogyny and reaction in general. But much of the "left" completely ignores that role. They ignore the fact that what these bigots mean by a "multi-polar world" is really every individual nation united across class lines around a particular ethnic or national group, with every other group repressed or driven out or both. They support this because it opposes US imperialism. That it means strengthening of Russian imperialism and/or sectarianism, that it means a disastrous weakening of the working class as an independent force in society, doesn't matter in their view. Code Pink's trip to Iran, which was nothing but a cover-up for that vicious regime, is but the tip of the iceberg. John Reimann -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
