Iranian LeftISM is a Reactionary Force

http://www.ghandchi.com/179-IranianLeftism.htm

 

Let me first make a short note before everything.  When I write Leftism is a reactionary ideology in our times, some people tell me that so and so leftist is not a "traditional" leftist and is a "progressive" leftist.  Well, this is true of any reactionary ideology like Islamism which can have adherents like some progressive Muslims.  But this does not mean there is a progressive Islam and clergy versus a reactionary Islam and clergy.  Islamism and leftism are totally reactionary and not just their traditionalists being reactionary. 

 

Islamism is trying a program to recreate Arab agricultural society of 1400 years ago and leftism is trying to recreate a program of European industrial society of 150 years ago and our times is the time of post-industrial information society and no matter what path Islamists or leftists take to recreate an outmoded society, they are a reactionary force, even when they try to incorporate some of the new thoughts and developments in their ideology to stop losing more of their followers..

 

The Iranian Left is a reactionary force trying to stop the development of Iranian intellectuals beyond the failed path of the left, a path which has been with us for almost a century.  If at the time of mashrootiat, the left played a progressive role in Iran, ever since the time of the start of hezbe toodeh, the left has been playing an increasingly reactionary role in the political development of Iranian intellectuals and the time has come that modifications and revisions of the left will not help the development of progressive intellectuals and this reactionary viewpoint must be discarded for good. 

 

It is so unfortunate that the left has become the religion of a big section of Iranian political intellectuals and with the exception of some political intellectuals inclined towards monarchy, the majority of Iranian independent political intellectuals are leftist and are still dreaming of pan-leftism referred to as etehAde chap!  A unity which means the unity of the past, even if it was practical.  The leftist unity plan is just like pan-Islamism, which is trying to unite a scattered force which belongs to the past, and its schism is exactly because of being outmoded, and the unity of such a reactionary force is not the solution to the problems of Iran and Iranians.

 

A number of intellectual magazines of the leftists do not say directly that they are leftist and try to tactically have a phase of democratic society following Lenin's theory of two tactics of socialist revolution and their publications are geared for that so-called first phase of their revolution.  They are continuing to direct the Iranian intellectuals towards the leftist religion, but do not say directly that they are leftist papers, and they try to show as if the world is the world of 30 years ago, when they reigned the Iranian intellectual thought; and they think they are the ones to determine what is the acceptable norm for Iranian intellectuals.

 

Were the failures of Soviets and the struggle of Chinese, with the same failed system, not enough, that Iranians should try the same failed path, now this time with the promise of Iranian leftists to have it differently?  They are symbols of a reactionary thinking which tries its best to become like a melli-mazhabi version of the remainder of leftist religion, mixing leftism with Iranian nationalism. 

 

Hasn't failure after failure of communism been enough for these people to see that their whole ideology is a backward thinking, like the ideology of the Islamists, that has been hurting Iran and Iranians, the thinking which was responsible for their support of Khomeini in 1979 and hostage-taking in its aftermath.  If Iran needed to experience the Islamic Republic, to see how backward Islamism is, the whole of Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, have experienced the leftist religion, running those societies, and we do not need to suffer another 70 years, to arrive at what those societies have found out by their suffering of this failed path.

 

I have written a number of times on this issue and all that the leftists have done, has been spreading rumors against me, one day calling me mojAhedin, another day calling me Shahi, another day calling me a Zionist, and anything else they can come up with, to attack me personally, because they have nothing to say in response to the issues I have been raising.  Their goal is to kill the interest of Iranian intellectuals in a futurist viewpoint, and to keep a watered down version of the left going.  So much similarity with their Islamist counterpart, who try to modify their Islamic ideology on one hand, to keep those who see the issues, from abandoning their failed ideology, and on the other hand, they try to use shahids to legitimize the cause of their ideology.

 

The leftists basically have nothing to say about the issues of the current world. Some of the issues I raised 20 years ago, now after the fall of the Soviet Union and the growth of information economy, it is hard for the leftists to deny, and nowadays they borrow some of the futurist ideas, to modify their leftist doctrines, and they write as if they have discovered modernism, without even acknowledging the time when they attacked these views as heresy, and were making jokes about computers, before information society grows before their eyes,  when I was one individual single-handedly challenging these leftist gangs, and some of them even gave me a death threat for repudiating Communism.  And later I had to stand up to their personal attacks and other methods, when underneath their issue with me was that I rejected the leftist path as a virus among Iranian intellectuals.

 

It is time that Iranian intellectuals get rid of this leftist virus, and start thinking, using the literature that is available in the 21st Century, rather than translating one more article of Marx and Lenin, and thinking they can find the answer to issues facing Iran and humanity in this day and age, in those outmoded works.  Modifying the left is not going to be an answer to the issues facing the world, and only wastes another generation of Iranian political intellectuals, without any results for the wellbeing of Iran and Iranians in the future.   I do not need to repeat the issues of the left that I have already noted in details regarding their programs and platforms.  Here are some my articles on those topics for anyone interested to read:

 

http://www.ghandchi.com/146-MKOLeftists.htm

 

In fact, I proposed a program of the futurist party, which I published a year ago, where I emphasized the need to oppose state economy, support federalism, and oppose Islamic laws.  Here is the platform that I think can work for building the future of Iran:

 

http://www.ghandchi.com/79-FuturistParty.htm

 

The reality is that the only way to unite the Iranian movement for progress and democracy is that our intellectuals need to see that the only way to lead the movement towards progress is by being futurists, rather than still repeating the same old leftist programs that have been with us for too long, and have failed over and over again.  What does it mean to be a futurist I wrote about it before:

 

http://www.ghandchi.com/178-BeingFuturist.htm

 

The new developments have changed a big portion of Iranian political intellectuals to a force that thinks memorials of great brave Iranian past leftist fighters is a program for Iran's future.  And the Iranian workers, which they talk about a lot, time and again, have said no to the leftists, but the leftists have all kinds of explanations for this rejection of the real working people of Iran who do not support the left, explanations ranging from the influence of religion to the propaganda of the regime, but they never think that Iranian working people want a social opportunity to live in prosperity rather than be proud of being poor and this is why they do not like the leftist panacea. 

 

The aspirations of Iranian working people for prosperity is hard to swallow for these leftists, who are mostly rich themselves.  Even if the working people in some other countries have had the inclination of taking pride in some Sufi-type poverty, the Iranian working people have never been that way, and this is why their heart desire has always been equal opportunity and a chance for prosperity, contrary to what the Islamists and Communists have wanted to believe about our working people, thinking of them as mostaz'afAn. The intellectuals need to show how through proper taxation and other instruments, such as national funds, in a property-owning democracy, equal opportunity can be best achieved in Iran.  Here is where I have explained the different aspects of such efforts that are needed to be done and why socialist panacea is just a shortcut dream that means nothing but what we have already seen in the existing socialist states of the last century:

 

http://www.ghandchi.com/303-Socialism-plus.htm

 

The reactionary left belongs to the past and it is already late enough and should be dropped altogether.  If Safar Ghahremani did not have much opportunity to learn of the most advanced thoughts of our times, the ones who have that opportunity, but still insist not going beyond the left, are doing a disservice to themselves and to our nation, by using the occasion of commemoration of a fighter like Safar, to fool people about  the same old reactionary leftist programs.

 

Leftist commemoration ceremonies are just like the shahid occasions that IRI uses to enforce Islamism.  We do not need to become another Iraq or another Syria where the left were instrumental in creating and supporting the Baath regime in those countries, to see how wrong the leftist programs are for Iran and its future.  We are already too late to catch up with the advances in all areas of human thought and sociopolitical change, and azmoodeh rA azmoodan khatAst.  Just look at Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.  Why try a failed path again?

 

 

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.IRANSCOPE.com
January 4, 2003 (Updated Feb 28, 2003)

 

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