[Marxism] A velvet revolution in Iran?

[Jscotlive at aol.com]

Louis:
 
The real struggle is not about "fraud". It is about clerical rule. It  
amazes me that Marxists can defend an election in which over 40 female  
candidates were ruled ineligible out of the gate.

Reply:
 
Clerical rule may be the issue as far as you and others are concerned, but  
it's certainly not the issue as far as US-led imperialism is concerned.
 
The Islamic Republic emerged from and exists according  to concrete 
material conditions. As I've said elsewhere, it is  inconceivable that Marxists, 
materialists, should negate these material  conditions when providing an 
analysis of this crisis.
 
The overriding experience which Iran, and neighbouring societies in  the 
Middle East, have had of modernity and European enlightenment  values has been 
occupation, colonisation, puppet dictatorships,  humiliation, and 
dislocation. As such, is it any wonder  that nations who've suffered the 
aforementioned would might  reject modernity and anything to do with the values of their 
 oppressor?
 
I worry when I hear Marxists focusing on symptoms rather than causes. It  
suggests to me the substituting of a dialectical for a metaphysical  analysis.
 
Women are debarred from standing in elections in Iran. Considered in  
isolation, and through the prism of western societies, hardly progressive. But  
the notion that the purity of bourgeois-style elections should be the litmus  
test as to whether we lend support to a state or not seems to me weak when  
considered in isolation from historical and geopolitical factors.
 
Yes, in the West women are allowed to stand in elections, and even sit in  
and head governments. The irony of course is that we're talking  about 
governments responsible for depriving women throughout the  Middle East and the 
developing world of an even more fundamental right - the  right not to be 
slaughtered and not to see their children slaughtered in the  cause of 
imperialism.