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.

----

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

 

What is really important, however, is the critical non-religious return to Marx's work and the critical positive and cool reconstruction of it.

All Marxist thematization of democratic revolutions after the Leninist Paradigm has been created in relation to the transition from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society and in relation to the development of capitalism in (once) dependent non-Western countries under the rule of Western capitalism-imperialism.

But Marx himself examined in a contradictory, sometimes sectarian ideological way, often with a supergenius open-mindedness way (this "combination" was Marx) the democratic revolutions within a dominant and already developed (for his time, but also with general criteria) capitalism.

I think the time has come to leave Lenin, his theories of democratic revolution and "imperialism" are snare, for to the radical thinking of the working class and wage-earning semi-proletarian and petty-bourgeois social strata, despite the evidence of truth they contain.

Critical return to Marx, repudiation of Lenin, this is the way.

But let me clarify some things here:

There has been criticism of Leninism from the left and from anarchism (and neo-anarchism), emerging many times the distinction between Marx and Lenin, as we mentioned above.

We mention for example Pannekoek, Gorter, i.e. the left anti-Leninist communism that developed in central Europe and was treated in the well-known vulgar libel and misinterpretation way by this aggressive lawyer, I mean Lenin, in his unacceptable slanderous distorting pamphlet "Leftism, the childhood illness of communism''.

Our detachment from Lenin and the desired return to the Marxist Paradigm as it can be understood in complete distinction from the Leninist Paradigm, is not based on this way chosen by the "left communists", since according to our own opinion this way, which -in fact- heralds the late ultra-left and hybrid anarcho-Marxism (workers' autonomy, etc.), is indeed possessed by a dogmatism, sectarianism and not rational criticism of both Lenin and Marx himself.

Of course, Lenin's slanderous and misleading criticism of the "left communists" refers to these negative elements, but in a way that we don't want to have anything to do with the way we choose.

At the very least, we need to see what these people were really saying, beyond the vulgar insults and slanders of Lenin and his descendants against them.

What is really important, however, is the critical non-religious return to Marx's work and the critical positive and cool reconstruction of it, also in the points we mentioned.

--

Leninism (Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc.) is a metaphysical and underdeveloped distortion of the Marxist dialectic, for which Marx himself was partly but not entirely responsible (if we look at things with a reasonable, moderate retrospect).

The Marxist work has no essential relationship with the Leninist tradition which in fact and also ideologically-theoretically is nothing more than the construction of a state-capitalist or state-exploitative society in the context of the emergence of non-western statism and capitalism.

--

The irony of history. Marxism was that theoretical and ideological current which, through its founder Karl Marx, highlighted the term and profound political phenomenon of capitalist modernity wich called ''Bonapartism'', but it itself was proved (through simplifications, exaggerations and conversions by its main representatives) to as one of the more suitable "political and ideological backgrounds" (not the only one) for the development of this phenomenon.

 

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

 

 

 

For the Iranian royal frog and his (on the surface) pro-Western company.

Do not worry, comrades, I am close to the ideological center (or centrism?), a friend of mine calls me centrist-extreme leftist, and I can assure you that this bourgeois meeting is not pregnant with anything powerful.

It is a defensive and temporary "postmodern" group.

--

 

A revolution, in Iran, which may have - as we used to say - mainly a "bourgeois-democratic" content, may be on the shoulders of the left to take place.

A center, a real democratic or social democratic center does not seem to be emerging, yet, and the bourgeois summit presented a rather pathetic and incoherent picture, this thing is not bourgeois leadership that carries weight.

A postmodern would-be Shah trying not to become a monarchist elephant but he seems rather like a stillborn carp who will never become a frog*, although he has the qualifications to be a frog, a football player, a former pro-regime, good speaker, but with contacts in suspicious American far-right circles, a more centrist with heterodox religious views, but he is Islamic secularist (!), and a Kurdish leader with an unknown amount of influence in Kurdistan itself within Iran, who receives the fire of hatred from all other (or most) Kurdish nationalist and leftist trends within Kurdistan.

The ring of new power is lost from the fingers of these people, already.

[*Royal Frog: Symbolic, constitutional king in a bourgeois parliamentary democracy..]

--

 

Since my leftist Kurdish and Iranian friends may have been disturbed by my "pro-Western" positions and I want to give them pleasure, I promise that I will give them (one of the next days) a brief, hopefully entertaining, illustration of the would-be but never-will-be Royal Frog*.

[*Royal Frog: Symbolic, constitutional king in a bourgeois parliamentary democracy..]

--

 

Khomeini:

مهمترین چیزی که مغز جوانها را خراب می کند و به فساد و هرزگی می کشاند ، موسیقی است. موسیقی خیانت به مملکت است !!!

«The most important thing that corrupts the brains of the young and leads them to corruption and debauchery is music. Music is treason to the country!!!»

I will now tell you a curse about Khomeini.

Yes, you dark Imam, you got it right, music is revolution, music and the hammer of the worker, the in loving youth of Iran, the love of life, will bury you and wipe out religious fascism from Iran and the planet.

The time has come, dark Imam, to enter your grave forever.

--

 

I've been saying this for years, for the last two years I've been shouting it to as many Greek comrades and fellow citizens as I could (becoming weird and strange to their ears with my obsession):

Τhe center of the global revolutionary volcano is Iran combined with Kurdistan.

I have repeatedly analyzed why I am convinced of this.

The truly democratic forces and the left of Iran are tasked with a huge historical task to politically represent this huge lava wave that comes mainly from the Iranian and Kurdish youth and the Iranian working class, but also from the deeper Iranian and also the separate but equally important Kurdish culture.

 --

 

If I understood correctly, the bourgeois meeting laid the foundations for a supposedly smooth succession of the theocratic regime by a "liberal" pro-Western political system.

1st failure of the would-be new bourgeois leaders of the new Iran:

They did not make it clear that they wanted a normal bourgeois parliamentary democracy to replace the theocratic regime, someone only talked about perhaps a referendum that would determine the form of the state.

The way this framework has been put is completely unacceptable even from an exclusively bourgeois democratic point of view.

This is a wretched sophistical oligarchical authoritarian and subversive framing of the issue, since a real democratic referendum has always as its first position that it will not bring about an undemocratic (monarchical) state.

There is no constitutional democratic referendum which could pose as a possible alternative the birth of a non-democracy.

Even Khomeini did not dare to violate this principle quite openly, and he even created a hybrid system of representation under the total control of the supreme clergy and the "supreme leader", but which provided a faint presence of a representation, while the pro-West ''democrats'' around the would-be royal frog, they don't even clarify whether there will be a representative body, they only talk about a referendum, without even guaranteeing that there won't be absolute personal power of a ruler with even a coating of a representation.

It sounds like a prologue to a secular but fascist one-man dictatorship.

If the meeting of oligarchs wanted to talk about the more special form of bourgeois parliamentary democracy in relation to a symbolic, and with constitutionally limited powers, power of a king (as they are in some "reigning bourgeois parliamentary democracies" in Europe, e.g. Britain), then they would be more honest, even if they didn't really mean it.

On the contrary, they left open the possibility of a constitutional monarchy, in which it is not even clarified what the powers of the Monarch would be, but it is certainly not clarified whether the main body of power would be the national assembly, the parliament.

This is a contingency that raises the possibility that in the future there will be a hybrid Bonapartist semi-secular pro-Western regime, in which various "repentant" murderers from the theocratic regime will have been integrated, but who will not simply be "integrated" ''repentant'' and controlled, but they will continue to exist as long as a kind of paramilitary parastatal authoritarian machinery is maintained as they are now in the theocratic regime.

It seems to me that in the rigged discussion of the oligarchs and featured celebrities, the supposedly strict (pseudo-democratic) duty to not have a split of the "democratic forces" now, stemming from a premature discussion about the type of government, was placed not clearly because the goal is clear, no to a real bourgeois democracy.

I said it at the beginning, but let's look at this again in more detail:

Who will frame the question of this potential referendum?

What will be the alternatives that will be proposed through the referendum?

Nothing was said about it.

This unsaid means and stinks of a Bonapartist perversion of the democratic revolution, even in its narrowest bourgeois-democratic possible context.

The supposedly pro-Western Iranian oligarchs pretend they don't know, but they do know, they are not stupid, that a democratic revolution is radical institutional-constitutional praxis and not simply a revision of an existing state regime.

As candidate constitutional legislators, they are further behind in terms of the clarity of their goals than even the theocrats of Khomeini, while they do not even make it clear that there will be a strong directly representative "body" of elected representatives.

They only talk about a possible "referendum", and say nothing else, not because they don't want to break the unity of the bourgeois democratic forces, but because they want from now on to play with all the Bonapartist diversionary scenarios, using the fictitious garb of "critical transitional period" and even worse using the guise of the "free will" of the Iranian people as predetermine in a fake referendum.

Deviants from Democracy from the start, that is.

This thing is not a democratic opposition even in bourgeois democratic terms.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basics analyzes of the political current affairs.

The expansion of the Western influence in Ukraine (in equal political and economic terms), and a possible extension of the Western influence in Iran (in equal political and economic terms), will be the progressive scenario of the 21st century, and as a progressive scenario it will be realized with the free will of the civilized progressive and liberal peoples of these countries.

--

 

So that the Iranian leftists never again talk about hijacking in the plane-revolution (which has begun with the engines on the maximum) are called by history to board the only plane-revolution that awaits them, which is the (bourgeois-or-socialist) democratic Western-oriented plane of independent democratic Iran.

If they don't take the wheel of this plane, others will, and then please to they don't talk about hijacking again, it will be funny, as Marx said.

--

 

As a resident of Athens, I have experienced 2 major earthquakes, which did not have the deadly effect of the earthquake in Kurdistan, Turkey and Syria, but can make me able to understand the horror and fear that a major earthquake causes.

The only thing I can say at this moment is that we are truly shocked by the pain of our brotherly peoples, Kurds Turks and Syrians, all the more because we live together on a turbulent part of the mother earth which, apart from the conflicts between us and sometimes our vast differences, she takes care from time to time to remind us in a radically primal way that we are her children in common.

I wish brotherhood in the difficult present, and also, something that is most difficult, brotherhood forever, in a hopefully not too distant future.

--

 

Η διαχείριση των φυσικών καταστροφών είναι διοικητική και πολιτική υπόθεση, αλλά ποια είναι τα οντολογικά όρια τής πολιτικής; 

Ως που φτάνει η αρμοδιότητα τής πολιτικής;

Οι φυσικές καταστροφές προσφέρονται για αναλύσεις τού στρατηγικού πεδίου τής κοινωνίας, διότι φανερώνουν διαρθρωτικά προβλήματα στην οργάνωση της, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή φανερώνουν τα όρια κάθε κοινωνικής οργάνωσης, γεγονός που γίνεται κι αυτό όμως αντικείμενο πολιτικής ιδεολογικής παρέμβασης.

Τότε, όταν ψηλαφούνται αυτά τα όρια, έρχεται η ώρα τής ανθρωπιστικής μεταπολιτικής που κάποτε ορίζονταν σε ένα ανοιχτό ως προς την ταυτότητα του θρησκευτικό θεολογικό πλαίσιο.

Και τότε και τώρα, ένα υπερβατικό στοιχείο εισβάλλει στον αυτοστοχασμό τής κοινωνίας, το οποίο όμως δείχνει αυτήν του ακριβώς την πολιτική λειτουργία.

Πολιτική όμως χωρίς παραβίαση τού μέτρου δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς Ύβρη δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς αξιοποίηση των πιθανών ως εκτός τούτης στοιχείων δεν υπάρχει, πολιτική χωρίς αφηρημένες και εκτός ορίων επικλήσεις των υπερβατικών αιτίων που πρέπει υποτίθεται να αντιμετωπιστούν με ένα ισχυρότερο αυτών πολιτικό αίτιο, δεν υπάρχει.

Και βέβαια, πολιτική χωρίς ξεδιάντροπη εκμετάλλευση τού ανθρώπινου πόνου, δεν υπάρχει.

Στην αρχή βέβαια υπάρχει μια συστολή, ένα μούδιασμα, μια τσίπα, σαν να υπάρχει επίγνωση ότι δεν είναι αρμόζον να πολιτικολογεις πάνω σε ερείπια λ.χ.

Η ιδεολογική και πολιτική εκμετάλλευση τού πόνου έρχεται λίγο αργότερα.

Όχι από όλους.

Οι μεγάλοι ανθρωπιστές δεν περιμένουν.

Λίγο μετά τον σεισμό, πάνω σε ερείπια και νεκρά σώματα, κάποιοι θυμούνται την διπλωματία των σεισμών (τού παρελθόντος) και κάποιοι άλλοι την γενική ενότητα των ανθρώπων πέρα από αυτά τα μικρά και ταπεινά των συγκρούσεων, κάποιοι άλλοι όπως πάντα την ταξική ενότητα των λαών.

Το τουρκικό κράτος έσπευσε όμως να τους προσγειώσει πάλι στη πραγματικότητα.

Παραβιάσεις τού ελληνικού εναέριου χώρου από την τουρκική πολεμική αεροπορία, χθες και σήμερα, πάλι. [8-2-2023].

--

 

The management of natural disasters is an administrative and political affair, but what are the ontological limits of politics? How far does the competence of politics go?

Natural disasters lend themselves to analyzes of the strategic field of society, because they reveal structural problems in its organization, but at the same time they reveal the limits of any social organization, a fact that also becomes the object of political ideological intervention.

Then, when these limits are felt, the time comes for humanist metapolitics that were once defined in a religious theological framework open to its identity.

Both then and now, a transcendental element invades society's self-reflection, which however shows this very political function.

However, there is no politics without violation of measure, no politics without exploiting the possible elements outside it, no politics without abstract and out-of-bounds appeals to transcendental causes which must supposedly be countered with a stronger political cause.

And of course, politics without shameless exploitation of human suffering does not exist.

In the beginning, of course, there is a hesitation, a numbness, as if there is an awareness that it is not appropriate to politicize on ruins, e.g.

The ideological and political exploitation of pain comes a little later.

Not by everyone.

"Great humanitarians" they do not wait.

Shortly after the earthquake, on ruins and dead bodies, some remember the diplomacy of earthquakes (of the past) and some others the general unity of people beyond these small and humble conflicts, some others as always the class unity of the peoples.

However, the Turkish state hastened to bring us back to reality.

Violations of Greek airspace by the Turkish Air Force, yesterday and today, again. [8-2-2023].

--

 

 

The overwhelming majority of the Iranian Left (as well as the Greek Left), is convinced that Ukraine is dominated by neo-Nazis. 

It doesn't matter if these ideological factions in the majority of Left criticize and dislike the Putin regime, criticizing the Russian invasion, since they follow the dominant narrative of Russian imperialist Propaganda with cow naivety. 

So we see that anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism are not enough to save from practical submission to an imperialism or a capitalism, as long as it is not western.

On the Western Left, such unrealistic notions also exist, although more widespread is a suspicious and ideologically more subtle neutrality.

2022-2023. The Left has been judged and weighed, and is light as a feather. 

Where the wind blows, as long as it doesn't come from the west. 

Then some they wonder how Khomeini won in the battle for who will prevail after the revolution.

--

 

Iran 2023. Beyond the theocratic regime and its supporters (certainly also a dwindling part of the Iranian people), a relentless ideological and political struggle is being waged within the opposition to the regime.

There are two main poles of this opposition: the nostalgic and supporters of the monarchy, and the left. 

On the fringes of the opposition there is move in the so-called reformist branch of the regime.

Unknown and unrecorded is the influence of centrist social-democratic tendencies within the Iranian working class and society (I believe and hope that there is a great growth of such tendencies, which still do not have leadership representation and a political "home").

There are justified and great suspicions on the part of the left that a large part of the regime is looking for the "danger exit" from the existing regime through the reformers in the direction of the neo-republican semi-liberal front, that the would-be new Shah is trying to build.

I believe that the revolution and the radical change will be led by the Iranian people themselves, rather trying to transcend in a democratic direction the traditional political and ideological factions of Iran, and I also believe that this transcendence will be defined by a non-subservient, moderate pro-Westernism.

--

 

The revolution in Iran is inevitable, it will happen as if it has the force of natural law. Iran is after or next to Israel the most deeply capitalistized country in western Asia, so the garment of theocracy is too narrow for such a country. 

I can even say that despite the great power of Israel at the level of capitalism, because Iran "contains" as a capitalist country a series of (demographic, quantitative-social, cultural and other) factors that make it the most weighty as a capitalist country in this widest geographical area of the planet, for that and it matters more than Israel.

The question is in which direction the revolution will be led.

The quantitative and qualitative development of Iran as a capitalist society, brings it to a paradoxical "isolation" in relation to its neighboring countries but also in relation to all of Western Asia and North Africa. Contrary to what many progressive Iranians (not only leftists) believe, Iran as a revolutionary society will not have followers as an example in this wider zone. Iran is already too much of a "western" society to coordinate with the other regions "closer to it" or "a little further away", so a revolutionary, necessarily even more progressive social Iran, will find itself in a geopolitical and cultural isolation that will only be able to be broken if it once again becomes the great flagship of the Western cultural, ideological and ultimately political influence of the existing Western world, without this necessarily implying a relationship of dependence towards Western capitalism/imperialism.

--

 

Fiction (heroes are fictional persons).

When the joke of ideological-religious sectarianism begins to turn into a serious slanderous situation.

''..I made a rather critical and cryptic post about the ideological founder of an important Marxist or "Marxist" sect or trend in the Iranian leftist movement, Hekmat, and again it was a mess with the Iranian and Kurdish comrades.

I have told you, when I ought not, for thus the demonic magic of real dialectic is lost, that I am here playing the part of all your devils' advocate.

But somewhere I have begun to lose track of your demons, and my work has become very difficult, the Mossad does not pay me well, it denies that all this constitutes overtime, I have become a low-paid mercenary of imperialism.

For many Kurds, and also many Iranian marxist, Hekmat is an Iranian chauvinist or far-right in the garb of Marxism, maybe even a semi-fascist, so they tell me, without proving it with excerpts from his writings or statements.

I saw earlier that he was even considered a Zionist, but in my service records I didn't see his name anywhere, so I thought that this theory was probably not well substantiated.

I also asked an old manager of mine, a specialist in the leftist movements of the Middle East, a former leftist Zionist who knew Ben Gurion from the time of the Second International, and he told me that this is all nonsense between communists.

Anyway, I'm desperate, my career is in jeopardy.

I also see the Hekmatists discovering the extreme right everywhere, something that even the theocrats of the regime are used to, who everywhere, as they say, discover monarchist Shahist and Zionist conspiracies, and I despair even more.

Where is the demonic truth? i want to find it to serve it and provide it good pay, which it would also help me in my spy career..''

--

The dialogue that inspired me [Continuously updated]:

-

Peshraw Ben

Mansoor Hikmat was not a (strong) Marxist, he borrowed the basics from different and diverse British Trotskyism. 

He just mixed these already borrowed theories with the Iranian context and produced a semi-pan farsism.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

Peshraw Ben I have pointed out elsewhere what in my opinion are the dark points of Hekmat's view. 

We probably have another completely different perspective on what these dark spots are. 

It is certainly not his thinking, I think, a simple reproduction of British Trotskyist patterns. 

Also, in what sense is he pan-Iranist? 

There is certainly a kind of intentional misunderstanding of the Kurdish national movements, as it emerges from the general intention of a unity of popular forces. 

Surely perhaps this intention hides an unacknowledged Iranian-Persian patriotism within the limits of hegemonism, but isn't it an exaggeration to speak of fascism? 

I think all Marxists have a common problem with defining fascism when discussing overt or covert nationalism.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

Peshraw Ben For example. 

Hekmat infiltrated Komala and created a communist Marxist tradition within it that has continued to this day through splits, as I understand it. 

There is a part of Komala that went to the right, with a leader whose name I do not remember well, but I have seen that he has direct contacts with international social democracy and western imperialist factors, from what I have seen there is a new split, not so to rightist direction, with Alizadeh(?) and there is still Komala who is driven by Hekmatist ideas. 

For me, all this is a bit of a maze. 

However, one cannot talk about semi-fascism when talking about the Hekmatists, especially the Kurds Hekmatists. 

Of course, from what I have seen, the heckmatists also easily use the term, slanderously, as well as the term nationalism.

 

Vassilis Serafimakis

Mansoor Hekmat.

 

Javad Rastipoor

Mansoor Hekmat neither had a strong mind nor was a Marxist. He was an opportunist with childish theories which put him on the far-right side of politics ... if we take him seriously.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

Javad Rastipoor You Marxists (I deny this self-definition, I am interested in workers' democracy, not isms) have a big funny when you deny each other the self-definition of a Marxist. 

You are like the separate religious as they are divided into separate sub-sects, Shiites vs. Sunnis, Catholics vs. Protestants, etc. 

If someone is an atheist or rather unrelated to each unique belief, he sees Muslims or Christians accusing each other as "atheists" or "not believers" in the doctrine of the one about the other. 

I remember once having a conversation with a Sunni Salafist cleric who was trying to convince me that Shiites are not Muslims, and I had a big fun with him. 

In any case, it would also be funny if a Hekmatist also participated in the conversation, who would claim that you and not he are NOT Marxists. 

All kidding aside, I'd like an explanation for these claims because I'm writing a book about the deep secret relationship between Marxism and religion. 

Also, no misunderstanding please. Moderate your momentum a little, not only in your own movement but in the entire left, in characterizing a political space as extreme right. 

For the left in crisis, everyone else ends up being considered far-right. 

This leads nowhere. 

An objective criterion is needed to assign such a discreditive political definition, because we all know that extreme right ultimately means fascism..

 

Javad Rastipoor

I can refer you to Razmandegan and Ranjbar newspapers which show how alien Hekmat was to Marxism.

If you need a doctor one day, and a person who you know is illiterate claims to be one, will you believe him? The same thing is true about politics.

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

Javad Rastipoor

Yes, I would like these references, because it is good to learn from Iranian sources and not from speculation what is happening in the movement in Iran. 

I also advise all of you, comrades in the context of a wider progressive comradeship, to translate your views into English, because the whole world is listening to you, also the whole left-wing anarchist and progressive social democratic Greece, since today they must nothing exist in isolation. Also, the fact that Hekmat may not have been a Marxist does not make him an extreme rightist. This latter characterization presupposes other documentation.

-

My post that sparked this discussion, and it said:

''Mansoor Hekmat.

A strong (marxistic) mind that produced a mixture of truths and delusions...'

---- 

Disgrace.

The Greek left (its main party, SYRIZA), through its official newspaper, calls indirectly for the lifting of sanctions on the Assad regime, at the same time accusing the US of sending aid only where there US supporters.

SYRIZA's argument may be correct as far as the USA is concerned (but it is not checked) but the fact that it combined it with the demand to lift the sanctions against the Assad regime shows what insidious pro-Russian and pro-Assad snakes are the false "leftists" in Greece.

---

 

Ακόμα δεν έχω καταλάβει καλά πως εννοεί ο κύριος εκφραστής των αριστερών Ιρανών πολιτικών προσφύγων στην Ελλάδα την προσπάθεια των δυτικών (ιμπεριαλιστών) και των μοναρχικών Ιρανών να αξιοποιήσουν το ουκρανικό "μοντέλο" δυτικής παρέμβασης.

Να σας πω πώς καταλαβαίνω εγώ τις φοβίες του, ή μάλλον τις προκαταλήψεις του.

Φοβάται το σενάριο μιας ενδο-αστικής ανατροπής στο Ιράν, και την εγκαθίδρυση ενός φιλο-δυτικού καθεστώτος.

Σύμφωνα με το αυτοαναφορικό ιρανικό αριστερό σενάριο η ανατροπή τής θεοκρατίας χωρίς σοσιαλισμό δεν θα σημαίνει κανονική αστική δημοκρατία δυτικού τύπου αλλά θα σημαίνει ένα βοναπαρτιστικο ημι-φιλελεύθερο καθεστώς, με τον επίδοξο Σάχη στον ρόλο του Λουδοβίκου Βοναπάρτη, όπως τον σκιαγράφησε ο Μαρξ σε ένα από τα πραγματικά σπουδαιότερα έργα του.

Δεν αποκλείεται οι αριστερές ιρανικές φοβίες να επιβεβαιωθούν, αλλά η αυτοαναφορικοτητα τής αριστερής ιδεολογίας τής εποχής μας είναι τόσο αδιέξοδη ώστε να δημιουργεί αναλυτικούς μονόδρομους οι οποίοι εντέλει παρεμποδίζουν την δράση και τής αριστεράς (εν προκειμένω τής ιρανικής αριστεράς) αλλά και των άλλων πολιτικών δυνάμεων, μερικές από τις οποίες δεν είναι υποχρεωμένες να χωρέσουν στους προϊδεασμους τής γερασμένης πλέον αριστεράς.

Στο Ιράν δεν είναι αναγκαίο να υπάρξουν μόνον θεοκρατες μοναρχικοί και μαρξιστές κομμουνιστές, όπως πιστεύουν και οι τρεις αυτοί πολιτικοί χώροι.

Η επανάσταση στο Ιράν έρχεται και δεν χωρά σε προκαθορισμούς.

Δεν θα αναφερθώ πάλι στην απαράδεκτη στάση τής πλειονότητας (και) τής ιρανικής αριστεράς απέναντι στον αγώνα τού ουκρανικού λαού, και το γεγονός ότι δεν χωρά στο μυαλό των περισσότερων (και Ιρανών) αριστερών η αναγκαστική αλλά και ελεύθερη επιλογή του να συμμαχήσει με την Δύση. Φτάνει πια.

Η συζήτηση τελείωσε σε αυτό το θέμα.

Να κοιτάξουν οι αριστεροί Ιρανοί τον άμεσο εχθρό τους.

Οι θεοκρατες τους αποπροσανατολισαν πάλι. Αν δεν το βλέπουν αυτό, τι άλλο να πω.

Η Ουκρανία τους πείραξε;

--

 

The creation of leadership and the choice of one or the other leadership of a people and a (mono-ethnic or multi-ethnic) nation, belongs, as a process and as a result of it, to the people and the nation itself.

Foreign peoples have rights to the opinion, since we live as one essentially one humanity, but they have the second or third opinion in line.

The first and "last" (determin) opinion in line, belongs rightfully so by each people, each unique and separate society.

The fact that we all have the right to judge and criticize a leadership of a foreign people, the fact that we can ask for a change of this leadership, although we are foreigners, does not justify hegemonic authoritarian foreign interventions in the affairs of foreign peoples.

On the other hand, as we have said before, we have the right to judge, to propose, to support one or the other leadership of a foreign people, without hegemony and overstepping boundaries.

Let's say, although I am not Iranian, I support the democratic opposition to the theocratic regime.

I don't consider my attitude suspicious, since I am not connected to secret services, nor connected to "my" state (but only as an ordinary citizen).

Within the Iranian democratic opposition itself, I like its left wing more, although I think it makes important strategic mistakes in its analysis and is dominated by sectarianism.

--

 

Open the border for the unfortunate Syrians of northwest Syria, finally. They have been locked in a cell, from where they can neither leave nor they get aid (even if they get, with difficulty, from only one road).

Some say they may be controlled by the jihadists.

So what? even if they are all followers of islamist organizations, which they are not (at least ''all''), aren't they human? do they not have the right to help and care?

--

 

From the beginning I have been wary of postpolitical humanism, which is essentially a form of metaphysicalized politics, but now is a partly different situation.

My suspicion is of a political nature and signifies the desire of a truly without ransom concern for the living and the human.

As a human being, I would prefer to speak only with actions, and not cover all my possible good human actions with big words about "Humanity".

A month ago a Syrian from NW Syria asked me for financial help and I couldn't give it to him because I don't have a fiver in my pocket, and that made me sad. It doesn't matter if this Syrian (in Facebook) friend was "real" or a form of fraud.

And 1/1000 if he was real, he wouldn't have, and don't have significance this point, for the my ability to help him.

It doesn't matter if this Syrian once made the mistake of supporting Islamism, after all that is his right too, every people has the right to make mistakes too, haven't we this right as every people?

After all, even if someone represents on an ideological level something that makes us cringe, doesn't he have a right to our care when he is down, defeated, wounded on the ground?

Are we not obliged in our hearts to help him live?

There is precisely here the difficult boundary of politics and the possible well-intentioned post-politics of real humanity and real human rights, at least when we refer to critical human tragedies of extra-human origin.

We must not bend our political criteria and political suspicion at this point either, certainly examining with suspicion the perennially cynical politics of all states, but also (examining with suspicion) the very position of people in the position of the victim.

But, perhaps somewhere there, there is also the sensorium, the sensitive judgment.

Help Idlib, unconditionally!

--

 

An old (commonplace, trite) reasoning of mine about war affairs, which I did not expect to be related to the tragic results of an earthquake (I will comment on it further):

Never step on the fallen body of a defeated enemy, because then you are just a dishonest and super evil person, regardless of whether you fought for a righteous cause.

-

The way Mr. Assad is behaving on Idlib shows that he has no shred of honor and dignity.

The way Mr. Erdogan treats the Kurds shows that he has no shred of honor and dignity.

The critical, not at all post-political, question to the Syrian opposition and the Kurds of the YPG, is:

How do you see now the political forces and political figures with whom you allied, even temporarily, to defeat your enemy?

[The Syrian Arabs (Islamists -jihadists or moderates) anti-Assad with Erdogan (occasionally or more permanently) and the Kurdish anti-jihadists with Assad (occasionally or more permanently)].

Neither their enemy nor their supposed ally have been treated by these "Mr" with basic humaneness, they think only of trampling down their defeated enemy and instrumentalizing their supposed ally-friend.

So, also the people have a partial (perhaps less) responsibility, unfortunately, because they voluntarily become the tool of the evil forces.

--

 

A strange bourgeois alliance in which a postmodern would-be Shah, practicing a postmodern Bonapartism, is "combined" as a vaguely institutional "role" (The Prince Shah who doesn't want to be a Shah, so he says) with a democratic Kurd of center-left (whom the entire Kurdish and Iranian radical left curses), and various other well-known pro-Western figures in the Iranian opposition.

I will not make up theories about a Western-imperialist conspiracy like my beloved Kurdish radical leftists and Iranian Marxist-communists in general, etc. do.

It is obvious that within the Iranian bourgeoisie and middle-class ethnic elements, a spicy food is being cooked in which the Western factor or Western imperialism does not only play the role of seasoning.

The Western factor wants to have a stake in the main body of post-theocratic food, and it too uses spoons and forks to stir the recipe.

But this does not mean that the Iranian people want to eat this particular food, and beware! I'm not only talking about the progressive, left, or liberal part of this people, but I'm also talking mainly about the part of this people that is governed by conservative ideas and perceptions and is perhaps now seriously flirting with the pro-Western scenario.

I myself as an uninvited outsider have suggested to Iran's sectarian-minded left to seriously consider this country as a western-oriented secular country in the future, but oh god or Allah or Buddha, I mean no such thing.

The moderately and independently pro-Western orientation of the new post-theocratic Iran cannot be implemented "from above", through Western state cooking, but only through its progressive unguarded youth, which is beautiful smart modern, either as progressive and left-wing or as influenced by moderated bourgeois liberal nationalist ideas.

What is happening among the radical youth inside Iran matters, and how the progressive, leftist and also neoconservative ideas are structured within this youth in Iran.

They are all Iranian youth, anti-theocrats, and culturally westernized, without underestimating the culture of Iran or Kurdistan.

--

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

Ο εκ τής Παρθίας ορμώμενος.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About banned "leftist Ukrainian political parties"

 Dear Comrades.

Messages about banned "leftist Ukrainian political parties" have appeared here. The pro-Russian authors of these messages take advantage of your lack of information and try to mislead the participants of our maling list. Our comrades from the Ukrainian Socialist League have carefully analyzed the list of political parties banned in Ukraine during the war. As it turned out, this list, indeed, includes only parties that have a real uncontrolled and predominantly pro-Russian leadership that has left Ukraine and predominantly pursues a pro-Russian policy in Ukraine. Let us examine this in more detail.

All of the parties that are on the list and have the names "socialist" or "leftist" actually have nothing to do with leftism or socialism!!! They all have oligarchic owners who are now in Russia. In addition to the odious and openly pro-Russian Communist Party of Ukraine, this list also includes:

1. The Union of Left Forces party here can be seen as a partial exception, because its leader Maxim Goldarb is a person who is organizationally and financially connected to the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. This party project was not initially oligarchic in nature, but Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov exchanged the party leader Vasily Volga for Maxim Goldarb for big money and took this party completely under his control. Its ban in court should be seen as the Zelensky government's fight against oligarchic influence in Ukraine and aims to neutralize the political influence of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

2. "Party of the Socialists" is the property of the fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Andriy Kliuyev (now in Russia), head of the Presidential Administration during the reign of Vladimir Yanukovych. Oligarch Klyuev put his business partner Yevhen Onoprienko in charge of the party. Yevhen Onoprienko held a very influential position as head of the Main Directorate for Regional and Personnel Policy in the Presidential Administration of Yanukovych. To call this oligarchic party "leftist" is the height of stupidity or cynicism.

3. "The Derzhava ("State") party" is an openly pro-Russian oligarchic project of Donetsk oligarch Gennady Vasilyev (now in Russia). This is the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine during President Yanukovich's time.

4. "The Progressive Socialist Party" is generally a "Rascist" Black Hundreds party led by Natalya Vitrenko. This is the mother of the Ukrainian oligarch Yuriy Vitrenko, Chairman of the Board of the Joint Stock Company "National Joint Stock Company Naftogaz of Ukraine". This is the richest state-owned company in Ukraine. Yuri Vitrenko has publicly stated that he does not support his mother's pro-Russian views, but serious analysts believe that he has financially helped this party. So again, oligarchic influence.

5. "Left Opposition" is a party that was registered by the leadership of the Communist Party in the case of the prohibition of the CPU. It does not really exist, it is only an entry in the state register of political parties.

6. "Socialist Party of Ukraine". The history of this party is very old and it is associated with the name of the famous Ukrainian left-wing politician Alexander Moroz. But several years ago the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine during the time of President Poroshenko illegally recognized the odious pro-Russian politician Ilya Kiva as the head of the party. Kiva himself moved to the pro-Russian bourgeois parliamentary party OPZJ, and put his close friend and assistant at the head of the Socialist Party. Kiva is now in Moscow and conducts aggressive Russian propaganda every day on state Russian television.

Dear colleagues from the maling list. Any attempts to pass off all this oligarchic scum as "Ukrainian leftist forces" are absolutely vain and not entirely sincere attempts!!!

Not a single Ukrainian leftist party or organization that is not tainted by direct ties to Russian imperialism or direct work for the Russian occupier has NOTHING on this list of bans!!!

There are a large number of such leftist parties.

No militant Ukrainian trade union has been banned either!!!

Don't let the Russian agents in the leftist camp spread blatant lies!!!

Respectfully, Peter Marin

zahist.wordpress.com

Again

Hessamaddin Seraj - Bi hamegan be sar shavad

Depeche Mode - Soothe My Soul (Extended - Official Video)

If they don't take the wheel of this plane, others will..

So that the Iranian leftists never again talk about hijacking in the plane-revolution (which has begun with the engines on the maximum) are called by history to board the only plane-revolution that awaits them, which is the (bourgeois-or-socialist) democratic Western-oriented plane of independent democratic Iran .

If they don't take the wheel of this plane, others will, and then please to they don't talk about hijacking again, it will be funny, as Marx said.

--

 

The expansion of the Western influence in Ukraine (in equal political and economic terms), and a possible extension of the Western influence in Iran (in equal political and economic terms), will be the progressive scenario of the 21st century, and as a progressive scenario it will be realized with the free will of the civilized progressive and liberal peoples of these countries.

--

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

 

 

The right historical narrative corrects mistakes, and safeguards the right future.

The right historical narrative corrects mistakes, and safeguards the right future.

Iranian leftists recount the Bonapartist Khomeinist diversion of the anti-monarchist revolution by using the word "hijacking".

This verbal expression of the Bonapartist diversion [made by Khomeini together with the theocratic-nationalist factor of the Iranian political life, of that time (also helped by the all-wise Tudeh, the stupid pro-Soviet party)] hides something that the Iranian leftists don΄t want to admit nor to themselves: no ideological or political faction at the time held the concept of "pluralist democracy" in high esteem, the left itself envisioned a revolutionary socialist anti-Westernimperialist regime, which might wear the already worn clothing of "socialist democracy" but it would be a left-wing dictatorship through perhaps popular workers' councils, for a time, until the Iranian version of the left-wing Bonaparte Stalin or Trotsky appeared. 

Known ending, in similar cases, repeated like the succession of day and night.

At that time there was no other, non-authoritarian, mass ideological trend in Iranian society, I don't know if it exists now, I hope it exists through the heroic Iranian youth inside Iran.

So who, with what ideological load, could beat Khomeini in an ideological-political struggle?

Khomeini didn't hijack the revolutionary plane, he just won the battle about which Bonapartism will prevail, the ultra-leftist or theocratic?

--

 

Stalinism takes its surreal revenge deep existing within the anti-Stalinist left & anarchism as a solipsistic cult of violence.

--

 

Don't look at the articles in the "serious" left magazines, look at the comments, under the articles, and you will understand how rotten the left people are, mainly in the west, but also in the non-western world.

They have become completely bogged down in an anti-Western grudge that brings them very close now, almost all of them, to a pseudo-neutral grey-red zone of moral-ideological twilight.

I'm not going to read an article in such a magazine before reading the comments, if I even read an article in a leftist magazine.

Some leftist intellectuals are trying to plug the holes in a sinking boat, but they are not going to do anything.

--

 

The 1% of the global left believes that the 1% of the Ukrainian people who are Nazis do not identify with the 99% who are not Nazis, and half of that 1% do not believe that the Ukrainian people are fighting as a proxy for NATO, and should Ι stay in left, because there is this 1%?

Those idealistic intellectual leftists some of whom are my friends here consider me more of an idiot than 99% of the majority.

I don't know how they feel, but I'm not fooled again.

--

 

You don't have to be 55 to realize you're an idiot because you think some other idiots are listening to you.

But if, nevertheless, you have succeeded in this way, then you must write your pseudo-epic of stupidity as a soap opera and not as if it were the Divine Comedy.

This is a difficult thing, especially when you leave a place where this thing is common, i.e. they narrate the stupidity of a soap opera life as if it were the divine-human drama of the purification from...alienation.

--

 

Intellectuals of the Western New Left! (except Pasolini only).

You made a monster worse than the old fashioned one, almost sympathetic, Stalinist monster.

You won't see it clearly appearing in the proper articles of Jacobin magazine (and in other magazines).

You'll see it pop up, below, in the comments, usually made by your crowd, by those people wich are always irritated by "western colonialism" etc.

You may think that it's all the fault of the old Stalinist tradition in the leftist populace (Stalinism as the perpetrator for all sins), you may think that the Russian disinformation machines, with many rubles, have done a great job, and you will thinking all right, in part. Because the other part of the responsibility lies with you.

Now, fend for yourself your movement, with "your people".

I'm going to the center.

--

 

So the old left had in its ideological arsenal a "must" to be moral, to be educated, not to burden the work and responsibility on someone else, not to justify your unjust actions towards other "simple" man, but the new left forgot this and created the saga of the always wronged always victims, always irresponsible because society is "to blame" capitalism and I don't know what other structure (maybe Althusser who drowned his wife, once, knows, since he could not be accused of femicide, so as a leftist of the new left he was saved from hell).

Let me tell you. From all this ideological havoc within the movement, only one contradictory person named PP Pasolini is saved as a moral subject. He alone is worth dealing with.

--

 

Ιωάννης Τζανάκος