THE PROBLEM OF ALTERNATIVE IS THE LEFT
http://ghandchi.com/118-TheProblem.htm
It was 1981. I was talking to a friend of mine after the crack down of Islamic Republic on the opposition forces. My friend was an old time activist of the time of the Shah. I asked him what he thought of 1979. He said, well with the fall of the Shah, the opposition fell too (mA bA shAh soghoot kardiim). This was so true. We had an *opposition*; we did not have an *alternative*. Opposition falls when whatever it is opposing falls, whereas an alternative replaces what it is challenging. We still only have opposition and not alternative, and I believe the biggest block in front of a futuristic *alternative* for Iran is *the* Left.
The Left which has no faith in its old plans for a Communist Society anymore, lacks any perspective for future, and thus has tried to borrow the slogans of freedom and democracy from the industrial revolutions of the past but devoid from the Capitalist Society, when industrial capitalism itself is obsolete, and the Left itself has no love for a Capitalist Society either, so it has ended up with empty slogans about democracy and freedom without having any alternative society in mind.
Democracy of a Capitalist society had a specific plan of the Capitalist Society it wanted to build. Communism had a specific plan of society and within it what it called freedom achieved by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Democracy of Ancient Athens clearly was defined with that society in mind. The Democracy for the futurists within a Post-Industrial Society and Information Age is clear. What is not clear is a democracy which even for some of its propagandists can be achieved with the *Islamic Democracy* by Khatami. Because they have taken democracy as a slogan, out of the context of the Society that needs to be built, for such democracy to have any meaning. Democracy has become equivalent to the anarchist concept of chaos in intellectual chat groups.
Let’s take a look at the following Leftist websites:
I think this is what we are dealing with. The so-called more liberal one, A moribund left which has become a bunch of cults. Cults that share only one thing and that is their *past*. One day the nonsense of some of them who calls the ones who point to the Leftist disease as CIA, and even support the Taleban in the war of US and Taleban in Afghanestan; and another day the nonsense of another group of them who think the Israel is what is causing all the problems of Iran and Middle East and another day another leftist cult who are monarchy lovers and ask Prince Reza Pahlavi to lead them out of the mess we have in Iran, and next are the ones who love Bush and CIA and want him to fix Iran for them, and finally another Leftist cult is busy with lobbyism fooling the ordinary Iranians that by lobbying for Islamic Republic, we can hope for the better.
The Left is the biggest information disease of our intellectuals. It is not the left of the time of its flourishing of socialism in the 19th Century. Of the time, when the forefront thinkers were the leftists. It is the Left of our time, when the Leftist are not just trying to save a sinking ship, but are trying to pull out an already sunken ship from the sea.
I do not have much more to write about it. I think I have said all I could say:
http://www.ghandchi.com/115-leftmission.htm
http://www.ghandchi.com/07-New_Paradigms.htm
Although the most real contributions to economic theory in the last half century has been by futurists and scientists like Wassily Leontief, but even libertarians like von Mises and Hayek had more to say in the last half century than the leftists, who just repeated the words of their masters, Marx and Engels, without adding anything new and the leftists wanted to win by cultism and backing of one or the other leftist factions and not by offering new theoretical work and solutions in the economics.
Leftism cannot be battled just by writing and arguments. It is like any other cults and the mindset and virus needs to get broken to open up for new thinking. The way to breakup this cultish mindset is the same way as other cults like EST and FORUM:
http://www.ghandchi.com/37-Cults.htm
http://www.ghandchi.com/09-Memes.htm
Look below you will see all groups except for futurist sites. And don't think it is accidental. I submitted IRANSCOPE link to them a long time ago. They even include monarchists and not futurists. Many of these leftists are actually the main activists of the monarchist factions. They just want to create a shell so that their supporters do not see an alternative *beyond* the Left and that is why they do not even mention futurist sites in their listing of Iranian opposition sites
Many of their brethren of the above are in the lobbyist groups and hate the MKO a lot because they hoped MKO to become their unity platform, when the Left was in Great Schism falling and disintegrating. They do not understand the reason for the Left’s great *schism* and its disintegration is the Left itself, which is *obsolete* and this is why even MKO could not unite the left. This Schism of the Left is just like the Great Schisms of Christianity and Islam and MKO is suffering from the same problem that the Left is suffering, because MKO has been created by mixing these two obsolete programs. The issue is that they do not have anything to offer for the future. Just general slogans about freedom and democracy is not going to cut it anymore. Even Khatami talks of it. One should show an alternative solution that can build democracy in this day and age and Left's old solutions are as useless as the Islamists’ programs.
Sigh!
http://www.ghandchi.com/102-Solution.htm
http://www.ghandchi.com/106-Framework.htm
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
http://www.ghandchi.com/index2.html
March 6, 2002
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* The above article was first published on Mehdis on March 7, 2002