Position 1.
Supporting a national struggle does not mean supporting the national capitalist-bourgeoisie. The fact that a popular or communist movement can support an honest struggle supported by the national bourgeoisie does not mean the support of the national bourgeoisie.
The fact that the national bourgeoisie can lead this struggle does not mean that you support the national bourgeoisie, even if you have to enter into a dangerous and transient alliance with it.
The notion that opposing interests between two social classes prevent their partial identification is a sectarian and dogmatic notion that has been completely overthrown in World War II. Not only is it justified to enter into an alliance with the national bourgeoisie of your country but also to enter into a national bourgeoisie of a foreign country if there is an anti-fascist struggle.
Tudeh's mistake was not that he believed that there was a national bourgeoisie but that he did not understand a) the negative balance of power for such an alliance and that he did not understand b) the reactionary ideological character of the theocratic elite leading the national struggle against foreign imperialism.
However, despite this mistake, the perception of those who denied the national struggle as justified and honest appeared when Iran was attacked by Iraq. Iran was right in its defense against the invaders and Saddam Hussein.
The reactionary Bonapartist leadership of the Iranian national struggle against the invaders tarnished this struggle but did not cancel it.
The Iranian people and the Iranian working class defended the country and turned a blind eye to the fact that the leadership of the struggle was reactionary, because the people chose their homeland that was right, they chose the least evil in the face of the greatest evil that would be its occupation of his homeland by the fascist army of Ba'athist terrorists.
The left was surprised, because the trophy of popular sacrifice and victory became the trophy of the theocrats, but neither the people nor the Iranian nation are to blame for this surprise, the left is to blame when it does not know the power of national consciousness in the working masses. .
When the nation is right the working people defend the nation, and endure the oppression of the national bourgeoisie if the national bourgeoisie leads the nation that is right.
The game of national leadership in Iran was lost for the Iranian left before it was conquered by the theocrats, but for this the responsibility in the nation and the meaning of the nation should not be sought.
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Western imperialism, the United States, Israel, are in partial but real conflict with the capitalist theocratic regime in Iran. Iran is a key ally and member of the new Eastern imperialist pole, which is why it is being targeted by Western imperialists. The competition is between imperialists, and Iran as a key semi-active member of the emerging imperialist pole is taking part in this competition at the risk of its very existence as a nation state.
The West has a clear and insidious goal: to use the Iranian working class, but especially the oppressed (and colonized by the central nationalist-theocratic core of the Iranian nation-state) non-Persian ethnic groups, to disrupt the unity of the Iranian nation-state.
The West wants to divide the Iranian nation-state into separate and hostile ethnic groups.
The main responsibility for this danger lies with the theocratic capitalist regime itself, but this does not mean that the West has no bloodthirsty adventurous plans.
How does the iranian left view these strategic plans of the West?
The regime uses fear, it uses national danger, to terrorize the Iranian people, but does that mean there is no danger?
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Position 2.
When the PKK launched an honest nationalist struggle in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, it was forced to form an alliance with Assad's Ba'athist regime in Syria.
I think this alliance was necessary, but it turned into a disaster when Assad was pressured by the Turkish state with the threat of war, at a time when there was no longer a Soviet Union to support him.
The entire structure of the PKK was liquidated and its leader wandered all over Europe until he was sold by his false allies, such as the Greek state.
He made a mistake in trusting the Greek left and the Greek state.
Not only did they not support him but they handed him over to the enemy, in exchange for a peace that stems from the fear of the Turkish state.
What is the lesson?
When you belong to a weak and oppressed nation, even if your nation has a state (the Kurds do not have that either) you are a game in the hands of stronger powers and your allies are made of straw, they can sell you in the bazaar the next day.
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When you set up politico-military structures but also camps in the area of a foreign nation, and not just a nation state, do you have control over the policies you pursue? What will be the consideration that this foreign nation-state will ask you for? What will the strong protectors of this seemingly hospitable nation-state ask you for in return?
If this nation-state has an ethnic composition like your own nation, your own ethnicity, yet by what political and class forces is it controlled? are they independent of other foreign powers?
What projects do you participate in?
How will you mitigate the inevitable influence of the hosts? will you be able to control this influence? or will your autonomy slowly erode?
And if, however, you have agreed to suffer this influence, because you have accepted without admitting it or even to yourself to form an alliance with the host, then how will you cut yourself off from him if necessary? Will you be able then?
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Position 3.
The winner of the battle was Fidel Castro and not Che Guevara. Fidel won the fight because he fought mainly on the familiar national battlefield.
When Che went to a foreign country alone, without having (above him) a leader created by that country, he lost. And this defeat was not only certain but also fast like a passing night, like a meaningless moment.
When the passionate but deeply rooted in the nation and its citizenship, the great Peruvian revolutionary Abimael Guzman, fought, for years, in an unequal and desperate struggle, he may have lost but was slow to lose, he could have won because he was fighting within the nation of, in his country. He did not ask for help from any other nation.
Help from foreign people makes sense when you have practical control over your affairs, even if you are a communist movement.
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Those who see the notion of the nation as synonymous with the national
bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie in general have lost, are losing, and
will lose all political battles.
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What was created through capitalism will not necessarily go away with
its destruction. The dialectic of the deniers of the concept of nation
is not dialectical, it is a metaphysical denial.
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Some people think that if they stick the word "capitalistic" in another
word, they will defeat that other word. This is even considered a
materialistic analysis, while reminiscent of a religious naming
ceremony.
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The
concept of the nation sinks into a conservative self-reproduction if
abandoned by democratic citizens and the left. Then our friends from the
far left accuse this meaning of being synonymous with conservatism, not
blaming themselves for abandoning it to conservative logic and
practice.
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By continuing to ''structure'' your political notions, you will not be able to defeat either the emerging ethnic nationalism of the oppressed ethnic groups in Iran or the nationalism of the sovereign Iranian capitalist nation-state.
I do not know of any ready-made solution, nor do the neo-left neo-anarchist theories provide a better solution than those provided by historical communism.
The only solution I can imagine is to orient oneself into direct empirical reality with an anti-theoretical attitude, as if one wants to look at things as dead ends, to the point of despair. One would say that this is not a "dialectical" or scientific theory. But would such an attitude be preferable if he wanted to at least understand the danger of the situation.
Even Marxism has come to be used as a sedative. Since "dialectic" means an "end" then our "dialectical" Marxist is simply looking to find the right medicine, as if it were in some sky of Platonic Ideas.
I do not intend to hurt anyone's Marxist faith, after all, how can you distinguish in so many Marxisms and factions who is the truest, the true Marxism?
This situation is of a theological nature.
I look at a foreign nation or two foreign nations from a far. I do not understand their language. With a little English and the translator I catch the meaning. And I see the same peace of mind, the same faith, the same delusions that I see in the struggling and passionate progressive people that nest in my own nation.
Most of them no longer want to wear the clothes of the nation, their nation, and in a sense they do well.
But at the same time that they refuse to wear this outfit, they speak and act as if they live in a private ethnic world. You get lost in the labyrinth of their own stories, you get lost without the thread of Ariadne in their own national world. The very ones who deny the nation and feel that it is drowning them like a poisoned garment, are the ones who live mainly in this garment, breathe the sky of their beloved homeland even if they live thousands of kilometers away from it, exiled and wounded, wronged and despised, persecuted and exiled by the angry state that rules it.
Their comrades from other nations, who are also enemies of chauvinism and primitive nationalism, listen to them, respect them, help them, but they cannot understand them, even if there are no translation problems.
At the critical moment, when there will be a great uprising in the homeland, they will leave the foreign country, and will run to help their people. The comrades will be in solidarity, some few and courageous internationalists will follow them, but their battle will be theirs, it will be the battle for the homeland.
Tell me now. If so, then where does the "dialectic" go? Where is the guaranteed solution to the tragedy that has migrated for many years to the heroic people of Iran and the mountains of Kurdistan?
Is there a solution to this tragedy?
Is there a way out of this Iranian impasse?
Is there a way for the glorious but sometimes talkative dialectic to solve the riddle?
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Dear Iranian and Kurdish comrades, I translate for you what the slogan I republish here says, which has been written repeatedly on all the walls of Athens:
"Let Greece die and let us live"
This slogan is a widespread slogan of the left and anarchist anti-capitalists in my country, and it means a complete renunciation of the concept of nation and homeland.
According to the extreme sectarian logic, this meaning («nation») belongs to the class enemies of the working class, belongs to the capitalist social class, to the state.
The consequence of extreme sectarian internationalism is this slogan.
In this slogan to see the consistency and completion of the ideas of renunciation of the nation.
Would you like to see in your homeland for example a slogan:
"Let Iran die and let us live"?
or
"Let the Kurdistan die so that we can live"?
And yet the new left in the West thinks that with such "logics" it is fighting fascism, nationalism and racism.
What do you say?
There will be sectarians who will refuse to "sign" this slogan, but I want you to know that I do not believe them.
In their minds they have the same cement.
They just hide and speak with a deceitful moderation, which the people of the bottom, the illiterate people understand, and understand the meaning.
I want to know, are you related to these sick ideas?
Because in the West the revolutionary left and post-feminism are flirting with such ideas.
Do you think they will respect your country?
Do you think that they will care if your homeland is torn to pieces for the benefit of imperialism?
Do you think that their flattery matters to you?
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Dear comrades, my thoughts on your movement start from a distant place. We are brothers, all people are brothers but we remain strangers to each other.
I do not want to teach people who have given their lives for their people, and are risking their sweet lives.
Maybe my thoughts are on the wrong track. However, they are clear on some issues.
I unconditionally support your movement, I have defended your movement in Greece when almost no one said anything. When Khamenei's theocrats in 2018-2019 killed cold-blooded protesters, I was a conduit informations for the horrific events when Greek society was silent or suspicious of the movement, when the ISIS-theocrats exterminated the Yezidis, I shouted almost alone in absolute silence. When the Iraqi state exterminated young people, I shouted almost alone in complete silence.
Believe what I said I was wrong, but my support is real. I expect a lot from you, I expect you to change the whole landscape of the Middle East, I expect you to illuminate our mistakes, to correct us, to give us again the lost ideological courage, I can say a new revolutionary faith.
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Ιωάννης Τζανάκος
