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GLOBALIZATION AND IRANIAN INTELLECTUAL CIRCLES
http://ghandchi.com/112-globalism.htm
The reality is that globalization of the world
economy is moving very fast and it is no longer an issue of theory anymore and
countries like Japan
and later Singapore, Taiwan, and now South Korea are
planning and actively producing for this epochal change and their products have
even taken lion shares of markets in the U.S.
Even simple look at the cars on the streets in the U.S. and seeing the Japanese
Toyota, Honda, Mazda, and now even South Korean Hyundai
cars, can tell one about this reality of production for world market.
Now what do the leftists do in the Iranian intellectual circles. Do they try to
analyze and study this phenomena, and look for the
best course of action for Iran
and Iranians in this global market? Do they try to see how much Iran
has been able to take from the global market beside
selling raw material (oil). No! Even in the best of the magazines with the
leftist mindset, you see articles after articles against globalization, as if
this is the worst thing happening in the world. This is just a Luddite reaction to the progress of our times. Then they
post or translate articles by people such as authors of Monthly Review in the
U.S., those who are a very tiny group of semi-Marxist professors (just like the
small group of Islamist professors in the U.S.), with no significance in the
U.S. whether among the American workers, or American intellectuals, or the
economists, or other academia and noone who makes any
impact in the industry or labor cares for any of their publications. Now what
do these people write? They claim on one side that Marx also had seen the
globalization (which is true) *but* they oppose it and say until there is
socialism (some imaginary kind of socialism other than the socialism which has
already been in Soviet Union, China,
etc), they want to stop the globalization. In other
words, they want to stop the real progress of the world until the world complies with
them. If Marx was alive, he would be the first to call these
"Marxists" reactionary Luddites. They
remind me of the ones who quote Molavi's saying of
del-e har zareh rA keh beshkAfi
to justify the lack of any serious scientific work of us in the areas of
quantum physics and saying that we already knew it all at the time of Molavi. Those Sufis are insult to Molavi
just like these Marxists are insult to Marx.
Frankly nobody cares even to write opposing the articles of Monthly Review
because nobody reads it except their own small cult. There are more Iranian
intellectuals in Iran
who have heard of Monthly Review than there are in the U.S.
This is the sad thing. This is the kind of nonsense that is fed to our Iranian
intellectuals by the ones who cannot see that industrial society in both its
socialist and capitalist forms already has happened and has finished and the
world is moving to a post-industrial global economy and the answer to the
problems of this new world cannot be found in Marx’s Grundrisse
or Hegel’s Philosophy and one has to study the new realities rather than look
for it in maktab and religion. People like John Rawls
have done more work on the issue of social justice in this coming new society
than all the socialists put together, and the leftists still like to claim to speak for social
justice.
Even writing critics of the left is of no value in most parts of the world
anymore. It is like writing critic of Christian theology. It is not significant
in the scientific circles. The sad reality that one has to spend time
critiquing it in the Iranian circles is ridiculous because these American
authors have no significant readers in their own
society and our intellectuals waste time translating the obsolete theology of
these authors for Iranian readers as if these are analysis of the world economy
and world developments.
In the West, all that ever was needed to write critic about left has already
been written by Karl POPPER, Lezcek KOLAKOWSKI, and
Daniel BELL and there is really not much more to add to what has already
been done.
Our intellectuals need to read the latest research in all areas of social and
technical inquiry including the research on the world economy by economists
like Wassily Leontief, by
authors like JOHN NAISBIT or ALVIN TOFFLER, who have done extensive work on the
world economy itself. Reading the speculations of the leftists about world
economy is worth as much as reading the speculations of the Islamists about the
economy. It is worth zilch. Nothing. Anybody who has
read a book like the MEGATRENDS of John Naisbit can
tell the difference between that work and the junk religious speculations of
the leftists.
Even more importantly our intellectuals should research the realities of the
Iranian economy to find the best solutions for Iran's
agriculture, industry and post-industrial technological developments rather
than wasting their time reading Monthly Review. The Monthly Review can give as
much analysis of the world economy as the maktab-e eslAm could give. The Islamists always claim the prophet
and their scholars had already solved all the issues of today and would say
their Prophet Mohammad had seen the world economy and would look for verses to
prove it and they call for their own kind of cosmopolitanism, which has to be
*Islamic*, just like the leftists asking for their kind of cosmopolitanism to
be *socialist*. Neither one tries to see what is developing in the world *now*
and plan for this reality. They are just stuck in dogma. This is all.
Both capitalism and socialism is at the end of its road. Socialism in its best
case in Sweden
is still not a solution for today’s world and capitalism is not the answer to
our world issues today. The developments in the West are not all capitalism and
the whole twisted view of the left sees it this way. The post-industrial
society is developing using multiple forms of ownership. The same way that
Islamists do not understand the world of today and see it as Islamist versus kAfar, the leftists see it as socialist vs
capitalist. It is a religious grouping related to a past of 150 years ago for
the leftists, and the past of 1400 years ago for the Islamists, rather than
analysis of today's reality. They simply have no understanding of the current
global economy. Sincere leftist supporters can read works like John Naisbit' s MEGATRENDS to change their whole dicatomous obsolete perspective of the world and see things
through new paradigms or else they will just feel disappointed and see the
whole world as one big failure, where they think their beloved socialism has
failed in Soviet Union and China and they try to make an imaginary one by
themselves, as if all those in Soviet Union and Eastern block were fools that
could not see what these people are trying to see in their cults. If they get out of their cultish
shell, they will see that in fact, socialism had succeeded, and completed what
it could achieve. Both capitalism and socialism were two main ways that
industrial society started, grew, and is finished now. The world is moving
beyond the *industrial* society in both its forms.
As far as the issue of globalization and Iran,
the following is what I wrote a while back and I hope to see more research by
Iranian intellectuals in Iran
about various industries. I have quoted a clergy in my article who had done a lot of research about the growth of
technology in Iran
of the last 20 years. Attached please find my article below.
http://www.ghandchi.com/100-IranFuture.htm
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.IRANSCOPE.com
Feb 16, 2002
P.S. For Related articles, please see:
http://www.ghandchi.com/177-antiglobalization.htm
http://www.ghandchi.com/index-Page19.html
http://www.ghandchi.com/index-Page13.html
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*The above article was first posted on Jebhe BB on February 16, 2002