On 7/30/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 7/30/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, Iran's officially a theocracy, and the election of the first lay
> man in a theocracy is a more momentous change than the mere
> generational change. After all, the Iranian people could have picked
> a cleric Ahmadinejad's age but didn't.
wasn't the alternative a full-scale neo-liberal?
By the time of the run-off, yes, it was either Ahmadinejad or
Rafsanjani (a neoliberal without being a reformist, but backed by most
reformists in the runoff). But before that, the Iranians had a wider
range of choices, from soft (Mehdi Karrubi, a Khatami ally) to hard
(Mostafa Moin) neoliberal reformists, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad,
Mohammad Baqir, and Ali Larijani:
(Kaveh Ehsani, "Iran's Presidential Runoff: The Long View," 24 June
2005: <http://www.merip.org/mero/mero062405.html>). Also, some
Iranian reformists, like Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji, called for the
boycott of elections, and the Iranians had an option of answering
their call, but few did:
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EF5ED1CC-5F71-4557-ADCF-F7B68D752CB5.htm>
<http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2005/may-2005/ganji-manifesto-22505.shtml>.
That's a wider range of social and economic choices than Bush vs.
Kerry.
> Yes. Iran's clerical and capitalist power elites, too, have been
> instituting neoliberal reforms and would love to privatize more. This
> is a danger, but also an opportunity, for that creates class
> conflicts, politicizes the masses, makes room for new leaders
> (Ahmadinejad and those who come after his term[s]), and so forth.
> It's up to the Iranian masses to turn the danger into an opportunity
> to end clerical rule and establish democracy (secular or religious,
> that's up to them), while defending the economic gains of the
> revolution, without re-subordinating Iran to the multinational empire.
> A tough task, but they can conceivably pull it off.
the key thing is the role of the masses, i.e., the urban workers and
the peasants. That is, it's wrong to invest any hope in Ahmadinejad.
The masses' own actions matter, but leaders and their leadership
skills cannot be discounted either. Both are important. The masses
cannot do without capable leaders in class society. What they can and
should do is choose the most promising ones and push them forward or
rein them in, as occasions demand.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
