On 7/30/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie:
>So do Venezuela and the rest of Latin America today. Changes within
>the overall capitalist relations of production matter.
But Iran and Venezuela's government have different goals. Chavez is
promoting workers power through institutions like the Bolivarian circles.
When the Iran workers asserted their power through 'shoras', or workers
councils, goons in the revolutionary guards did everything they could to
smash the shoras and make the workers heel the line through forced prayer
meetings, show trials and outright beatings and killings.
The Iranian and Venezuelan Revolutions happened at different times
with different initial outcomes, to be sure.
The Iranian Revolution's abolition and subordination of workers'
initial vehicles of autonomous self-organizing to the vehicle
(Khaneh-e Karegar, the House of Labor, controlled by the Islamic Left)
created by the ruling faction is pretty much similar to what
Communists did to similar workers' self-organizations in Spain,
Russia, China, and so on, as anarchists, council communists, and so on
never stop reminding us. In no formerly or actually existing
socialist country have workers' organizations independent of and even
antagonistic toward the ruling party control been welcomed*, and quite
often they were harshly repressed, indeed by means including torture,
show trials, and killings.
But things have and will continue to change in Iran**, too, and that's
what we ought to pay attention to, rather than getting stuck in the
past. In many respects, Iran is now ironically far less capitalistic
and far more democratic than China, Vietnam, Russia, Eastern European
nations, and so on that once were socialist. Masses of Iran first
backed Khatami's faction to push for women's rights, civil liberties,
and so forth, and when they saw that the Khatami faction made few
substantial changes in those respects, busy unleashing neoliberal
reforms instead, masses backed Ahmadinejad's faction in order to
combat market fundamentalism. That the Iranian Revolution has made
room for such political changes is what I emphasize, and the Iranian
masses' choices in both cases are what I defend. The Iranian people
remain politicized, and I'd like to see them become even more
politicized. Ahmadinejad raised people's economic expectations.
Whether or not his faction delivers, raised expectations will sharpen
class contradiction -- a seed for further change, perhaps more
momentous change than before.
To come back to the question of leadership, you can't dodge the
problem of attachment to iconic leaders in socialist countries and the
question of how leaders should get selected by and held accountable to
masses, with maximum public participation. Without that, people get
depoliticized and eventually become unable to defend the revolution in
a politically and/or economically difficult time.
* Even in Venezuela, the relation among the ruling faction, the state,
and workers' organizations remains an unresolved question:
<blockquote>VENEZUELA: UNT divisions cause congress suspension
Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, Caracas
The second national congress of the National Union of Workers (UNT),
the main progressive union federation in Venezuela, was suspended on
May 27 after factional divisions led to a walkout by groups
representing a minority of the delegates present. Tensions that had
been simmering for some time boiled over that morning when a fight
broke out. Chairs were thrown and several unionists were injured.
Unarmed troops had to separate the opposing groups.
The immediate issue that provoked the conflict was whether elections
for leading national positions, including national coordinators, would
be held this year or delayed until early next year. When the UNT was
set up as a progressive alternative to the far right-wing
Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) in 2003, national
coordinators were appointed, and no elections for leading positions
have been held, despite commitments to do so.
Tensions had grown from the first day of the congress, May 25, when
the entire day was taken up with credentialing around 3000 delegates
from UNT-affiliated unions and federations from around the country.
Disagreement over credentials kept the process going until midnight.
At the first plenary, on the morning of May 26, the congress started
in apparent good spirits, with greetings being delivered on behalf of
Britain's National Union of Journalists and union organisations in
Italy, France, Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
Greetings were also given on behalf of progressive unionists in
Australia.
However, when key leaders of the UNT started speaking the internal
differences became evident. There were boos and calls of "elections,
elections" during the address of UNT national coordinator Marcela
Maspero. Maspero leads the largest minority group within the UNT, and
favours postponing the union elections until the first quarter of
2007, mainly on the grounds of giving priority to the campaign to
re-elect President Hugo Chavez in December this year.
Maspero was followed by Orlando Chirino, leader of the Current for
Revolutionary Class Unity and Autonomy (C-CURA), whose reception by
the audience indicated he had strong support from the majority of
delegates present. Chirino called for calm, but the lines had been
drawn for the coming division of the congress.
Following an afternoon in which the different currents caucused
separately to discuss their plans, the session ended for the day. It
was reported that UNT leaders met till 5am to try to thrash out a
compromise solution to the stalemate on the elections question —
apparently without success. The next morning, the dispute boiled over
into open conflict and a division of the congress.
The majority of delegates stayed in the main hall with Chirino and his
colleagues, including Stalin Perez and Ruben Linares. The four other
minority factions went upstairs and outside to hold separate meetings,
ending the congress with the major issues unresolved.
In a statement issued on May 28, Chirino argued: "For C-CURA there was
no doubt that the democratic will of the workers and trade union
leaders from the grassroots was that the UNT should have a new,
legitimate direction, that there be an end to all the fights and
conflicts, and that in December the re-election of President Chavez be
achieved as a form of defending the social and democratic conquests.
The majority of workers supported the position that there should be
elections this year, that a UNT leadership would then be legitimate,
it would be strengthened, and in a better position to fight for 10
million votes for President Chavez."
The statement continued: "The support for the revolutionary process
and the re-election of President Chavez is not a sufficient excuse to
delay the internal elections of the UNT. The national coordinators
were appointed three years ago with the promise that within three
months there would be elections to legitimise the leadership.
"The manoeuvres of Marcela Maspero's current began several weeks
beforehand, with the aim of controlling the congress, the removal of
credentials and delivery of these credentials to her followers, the
delivery of accreditation to people who had nothing to do with the
trade union movement".
Maspero sent "her delegates to good hotels. Meanwhile, the
representatives of other currents were sent outside Caracas to
accommodation where there was no water. Meanwhile, the transport that
should have brought them to the capital was notable by its absence.
All this generated a great deal of bad feeling among hundreds of
honest delegates who came to the congress from the regions to
participate democratically."
Marcela Maspero, for her part, declared, according the May 30 daily
Ultimas Noticias, that the "majority of delegates agreed to have
elections in the first trimester of 2007 in order to give priority to
the 10 million votes [campaign] for the presidential elections". The
three other currents supporting her were the Bolivarian Workers Force
(FBT), the Autonomous Union, and followers of Franklin Rondon, who was
roundly booed at the congress as a former supporter of the April 2002
coup against Chavez.
It is clear that the Chirino group had the backing of a significant
majority of the UNT delegates at the congress. It also appears that
the most militant forces among the union membership generally support
the Chirino leadership
In his speech to the section of delegates remaining in the hall after
the walkout, Chirino said that every effort had been made during the
all-night meeting the previous evening to find a compromise, involving
a transitional election to be held soon with a commission being set up
to hold permanent elections at a later date. The interim election
would involve a system of special consideration for minority
representation.
The divisions in the UNT are a serious setback for revolutionary
unionism in Venezuela. They come at a bad time, with the presidential
elections due on December 3. The apparent cold split in the UNT is a
life raft for the reactionary CTV, which has been reduced to a
bureaucratic rump in recent years, and a boost for the US and its
supporters in the right-wing Venezuelan opposition.
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/670/670p15.htm></blockquote>
** About the changes in Iran since the beginning of the Iranian
Revolution, see, for instance, Roksana Bahramitash, "Market
Fundamentalism versus Religious Fundamentalism: Women's Employment in
Iran," Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13.1, Spring 2004:
33-46; Social Change in Iran: An Eyewitness Account of Dissent,
Defiance, and New Movements for Rights, ed. Behzad Yaghmaian, State
University of New York Press, 2002; Valentine M. Moghadam, "Women,
Work, and Ideology in the Islamic Republic," International Journal of
Middle East Studies 20.2, May 1988: 221-243; Moghadam, "Revolution,
the State, Islam, and Women: Gender Politics in Iran and Afghanistan,
Social Text 22, Spring 1989: 40-61; Moghadam, "Gender and
Revolutionary Transformation: Iran 1979 and East Central Europe 1989,"
Gender and Society 9.3, June 1995: 328-358; and Moghadam, "Islamic
Feminism and Its Discontents: Toward a Resolution of the Debate,"
Signs 27.4, Summer 2002: 1135-1171.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
