Political notes on the Iranian democratic revolution and Turkey.

Political note on the Iranian democratic revolution (1).

 

Watching carefully the bourgeois meeting that had as its symbolic center the would-be royal frog, "prince" of Iran, I began to understand a little better the difficult political chess that is played within the Iranian people.

This chess actually has three relatively distinct players.

The Iranian left, the theocratic regime, and the monarchists. For the sake of narrative convenience, I am removing other, perhaps equally important political factors.

In the first revolution all the non-pro-Shah were against the monarchy, but there was ruthless competition between them as well.

In this second revolution which is just beginning, all the non-theocrats are against the theocrats, but there is also ruthless competition between them.

It's not that simple, I'm simplifying it, maybe the leftists simplify it a little more than they should, forming in their minds (according to their ideological habit) a deeper dipole in which one pole is themselves, while the other pole is a twoheaded/right-wing capitalist monster, one head of which is the theocrats and the other head is the monarchists.

I tend to like the leftist interpretation of the game more, but my humble little knowledge of political theory (that's what I studied anyway), it prompts me to point out that the leftist interpretation fails somewhere.

It is a moralistic, sometimes useful, interpretation which underestimates the deep division within the Iranian bourgeoisie, a division that exists not only to "stop" the leftist and truly democratic movement in Iran.

I agree that this intra-bourgeois division is a "reactionary division" that probably leads to the total entrapment of the popular masses of Iran, if it is not revealed as a reactionary and largely apparent-shallow division, but on the other hand I disagree with the Iranian left as to its practical and critical significance for Iranian society itself in terms of Iran's international and politico-cultural orientation in the future.

The question of ''imperialist West or imperialist new east'' is not and at the same time it is a very important practical strategic question posed to Iranian society, which the left cannot overcome with a general and metaphysically structured ''transcendence'' of, of the ''neither-nor'' type.

In any case, even if the left puts the question like this, as ''neither-nor'', the fact that the bourgeois elite puts it as a whole and also in effect as an ''either-or'' creates the game as super-super-complicated.

The leftist leaders, the leftist intellectuals of Iran, must start thinking in terms of chess and not just "binary".

Like it them or not, they too play a game of chess with three players, triple tri-pole chess.

Political note on the Iranian democratic revolution (2).

Even we non-experts in modern Iranian history know that the overthrow of the monarchy was decisively related to the hard and uncompromising strike of the workers of the Iranian oil industry.

Why today, while a important libertarian and democratic movement is developing in Iran, the Iranian industrial working class has not shown the necessary strong positive response to this movement?

Possible explanations:

1. There is control and suppression.

2. The movement is bourgeois-democratic and does not deeply move the industrial proletariat.

3. There is no proper socialist leadership of the industrial working class.

4. The importance of the industrial working class has been overestimated in relation to the modern democratic or even socialist revolution.

5. As has been shown by other historical examples from advanced capitalist societies, an industrial working class can become alienatingly intertwined with "its" chauvinistic nation-state.

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Democracy is sometimes a cold-blooded moral-political system of thought.

For the democratic way of thinking, there are no general and vague political ''victims'', but only politically responsible citizens.

Democracy (of any form) transfers responsibility to the people, and it does well.

Whoever does not like it should look for a state form that transfers the responsibility to the ''unbelievers'', or to the (non-existent) ''God'' himself.

Political Islam in Turkey has relied on migrant smuggling, support for jihadists, also on a corrupt system of constructors and public works mega-contractors, and now Turkey's Islamist government is launching prosecutions against some constructors to wash away its sins for the deplorable state of construction in Turkey, wich caused the collapse of buildings that collapsed due to the great earthquake.

Is the end of Erdogan coming?

I don't know.

If the Turkish people do not wake up, there will be no end to Erdogan. But if this end comes, who will follow?

The Kemalists and Aksener?

There is no hope in Turkey, except...the Kurds.

The people who freely elect their leadership have the leadership they deserve.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος