Very general conclusion.

It is known that Khomeini returned to Iran to take power on an Air France plane, we also know that he was playing games with both French capital and American capital to prevent the rise of leftist and communist forces after the imminent fall of the Shah.

At that time the West believed, rightly if one looks at it cynically, that such a rise would benefit the Soviet Union.

All of these correctly reflect some aspects of the rise of theocrats to power, but on the other hand, through this narrative, when it is absolutized, we forget the equally important other side of the political and economic reality that was signaled and recommended by this triumphant return of the dark Imam in "his" unfortunate country.

The maneuvering of the West and the naivety of its pragmatistic anti-Soviet cynicism did not leave it unscathed in the end, when it was revealed that the dark Imam and his faction did indeed aim, and succeeded, at creating a harsh dark and reactionary capitalist theocratic regime which indeed it was independent and hostile towards the Western world and Western imperialism.

Iranian leftists will of course object to this fact saying that this regime continued to have capitalist dealings with Western capitalists, etc.

But this does not negate the aforementioned.

We should not judge the Iranian theocrats from an assumed "common value" that consist of opposition to Western imperialism, as if they abandoning it because they are not consistent with the "untouchable" that this supposed value means.

If we do this, it will be as if we are assuming that indeed the opposition in the West and also in imperialism in general should be intrinsically good and benevolent, the "Indeed Good", which these Islamists supposedly betray with their parallel dealings with the "Western Enemy".

The very leftist criticism against the Iranian theocrats on the basis of (usually always) ontological anti-imperialism does not reveal their supposed inconsistency but our possible involvement with a dangerous politically metaphysical ideology called "anti-imperialism".

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Very general conclusion:

Anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism usually means an ideological expression of a capitalist state opposition on the part of the weaker capitalism and state.

However, the cure from this wrong positioning of the problem, which concerns the overcoming of imperialism without this overcoming falling into "anti-imperialism/anti-colonialism", is not a reductionism in the general "anti-capitalism" in a competitive distinction from "anti-imperialism".

Therefore?

What is the medicine for critical theory?

I don't know.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος