On 7/30/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > > One thing that formerly and actually existing socialist societies
> > > never overcame is attachment to iconic leaders
> On 7/29/06, Carrol Cox wrote:
> > I think that is a reflection of the fact that every socialist regime so
> > far has been a regime under seige.
On 7/29/06, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> OK, but does it have to be the same darn leader _for decades_? Does
> it have to become a _family business_? From Kim Il-sung to Kim
> Jong-il, from Fidel Castro to Raúl Castro? I don't think so.
>
> The Iranian Revolution managed to make transitions, both in the
> offices of the Supreme Leader* and the President (elected for a
> four-year term, with the limit of two terms), through elections. The
> Supreme Leader is elected (for life) by the Assembly of Experts, which
> is in turn directly elected by public vote (for eight-year terms),
> though the Guardian Council* vets its candidates.
I'm sorry, Yoshie, but this is fallacious, putting too much emphasis
on the name & face of the individual leader. It's like the result of
the Mexican revolution of 1911: in response to the repeated
"re-election" of the corrupt Porfirio Diaz, it abolished re-election
(and some streets in Mexico were thus titled "No Reeleccion"). But it
created a system in which the PRI was repeated re-elected. In Iran,
they made sure that the Shi'ite imams and their political parties were
re-elected. (Similarly, in the old USSR, it was the CPSU that was
"re-elected" over and over again. They did escape the attachment to
"iconic" leaders, leaving only Lenin, who had no power to use his
iconic status for good or evil, since he was dead.)
Notice that Ahmadinejad is the first lay man who got elected
President. He isn't an imam.
I'm not saying that Iran is a multi-party democracy. I'm saying that
Iran has made room for public participation in factional conflicts
representing quite distinct economic and other programs within the one
party that rules -- the USSR, etc. never got that far.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
