Michael, thank you for pointing me to the ceasefire piece, because it states your position more clearly than I could have, and it is precisely the equivocation I've been describing, now in operation rather than in theory.
You write there that the RCIT supported Iran's resistance "without lending political support to the regime. " Good, that is the third-camp distinction, the one you've spent this thread telling me I don't really hold. But two sentences later the test you apply to other socialists is whether they advocated Iran's military victory , and the slogan you marched under was "Defend Iran." Those cannot both stand. Advocating the military victory of a state in an interstate war is political support for that state's war; there is no victory of "Iran" in that war that is not a victory of the Iranian state, its command, and its war aims. "No political support to the regime" is the credential; "advocate Iran's military victory" is the content; and the gap between them is the whole argument we've been having. You've closed it yourself, on the side of support. Now take the point you pressed hardest against me that my anti-imperialism is "platonic" because I never back a concrete struggle. Look at what your own organization did. In 2022 you published "Long Live the Popular Uprising against the Mullah Regime." In 2026 your central slogan became "Defend Iran." Same state. Same regime. Same clerics who shot the 2022 protesters and who will go on shooting Iranian workers after the ceasefire. Nothing about the class character of the Iranian state changed between those two positions, and nothing about how it treats its own people changed. The only variable that changed was who Iran was fighting. When the regime faced its own working class, you were against it; when it faced Washington, you were for its military victory. That is not a theory of imperialism. It is a rule that reads a state's enemy and assigns your loyalty accordingly, which is the precise definition of campism, and you've just run the controlled experiment that proves it. This is also why "platonic" misfires. The third camp backed the 2022 uprising and would back the next one and backed Solidarność against a Stalinist state and backs Iranian workers when they strike concrete, named struggles of the class. What we decline to do is convert support for a people fighting into advocacy of their state's military victory, because the moment you make that move you have handed the class to the regime that will turn on it the day the war ends. You derive "advocate its military victory" from "Iran is the semi-colony. " I predicted that derivation in my last letter before I'd read this piece. The piece confirms it in print. So I'll rest it here. The lesser-evil equivocation, the genetic treatment of Draper, and "Defend Iran" are one structure: in each, a comparison between states does the work that only the independent action of the working class can do. I think the Iranian workers are owed an anti-imperialism that is still standing with them the morning after the ceasefire when your slogan has already gone home and theirs is just beginning. In solidarity, Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42239): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42239 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120037933/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
