On 5/9/07, Daniel Davies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie wrote:
>>Leftists in the North basically act as if "criticisms" of parties,
movements, and governments of the South are just a matter of pointing
out this or that is wrong, which doesn't help activists in the South,
most of whom already know _that_.<<
I hate to say this, particularly given the context, but the obvious
counterexample to this is Iran, where a very large proportion indeed of the
local socialist opposition ended up exiled or dead, precisely because they
didn't know what was wrong with the Khomeinists. (Specifically, they didn't
believe that the Khomeinists wanted to form a totalitarian government.)
This is where I differ. It's not so much Mojahedin, Tudeh, Fedai,
etc. didn't know who Khomeini and Khomeinists were -- it's that the
former underestimated the latter's ability to build hegemony over
Iranian society and that the former didn't have enough support in
Iranian society to defeat the latter.
BTW, if the balance of social forces and political factions had been
different, and if Mojahedin (the largest opposition in the early days
of the Iranian revolution), on its own or in coalition with other
leftists, had taken state power, I'm sure most leftists in the West
would have criticized the Mojahedin government in nearly identical
terms that they do today's Iranian government.
--
Yoshie
