As Iran continues to fight its war of defense against the rogue terrorist regimes of the United States and Israel, the publication of an Open Letter to Iran's political prisoners – signed by many well-known left-wing political activists including Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, as well as by current and former political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal and Yassin al-Haj Saleh – triggered a firestorm of debate among leftists around the world.
The Open Letter described its perspective as one of “anti-imperialism” and did not fail to denounce “the aggression and violence of [the U.S.] imperialist and Zionist forces” that “instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance.” But its focus was on the plight of Iran's tens of thousands of political prisoners and the Islamic Republic dictatorship's escalating campaign of executions – and for some on the left, that was a unforgiveable crime.
Leading the way in condemning the Open Letter was Vijay Prashad, a prominent voice of the “campist” left which believes the Great Powers of the West – and especially the United States and its allies like Israel – are the only imperialists and that the principal hope for resisting them are the “camp” or “axis” of states that are in conflict with them. There is an appropriate “time and place” for criticizing regimes like Iran’s, Prashad wrote, but for as long as those regimes face Great-Power aggression, any solidarity with the victims of their domestic repression effectively aids the imperialist enemy.
In this debate, we revolutionary socialists stand proudly with those who say it is possible to consistently oppose imperialism without abandoning the masses who are simultaneously oppressed by states that are in conflict with the Great Powers. In fact we insist that this is the only way to defeat imperialism and that the campists’ perspective dooms that cause.
The injustices perpetrated by regimes like Iran’s are what undermine their people’s unity against imperialism. Those injustices also undermine international solidarity against imperialism, as can be seen in how the Great Powers use those injustices as utterly fraudulent excuses for war and claim to be pursuing “regime change” to free oppressed people.
Prashad’s argument that resistance to imperialism requires absolute unity with the states that are under attack merely echoes the claims of those regimes as they justify unleashing terror against their own people – especially the working class, leftists and all democratic forces. This points to why the ruling classes of oppressed countries play a contradictory role when it comes to imperialism. They may fight imperialists in order to defend themselves and expand their own power and wealth, but – especially as an excuse to tighten their own grip on power – they can also welcome and even encourage the imperialists’ aggressions. It is only the exploited and oppressed masses of the countries oppressed by imperialism, therefore, that have every interest in overthrowing imperialism and why their democratic rights must always be championed against their rulers.
All this explains why we were encouraged by the response to this debate written and published by the “anti colonial iran” collective and are proud to have joined it as signatories. As their statement explains, the original Open Letter “brought an unexpected fresh breeze of hope and opened new horizons of liberation beyond borders.” As for the campists such as Prashad, the response rightly condemns them for having “long abandoned the very basic principles of the anti-imperialist tradition: international solidarity in support of lives crushed under the hammer of global capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.”
The “anti colonial iran” statement in fact surpasses the original Open Letter in some ways. For example, it amplifies to a greater extent the voices of social movements in Iran such as that of the Tehran Bus Drivers syndicate. Particularly valuable is its description of the extraordinary struggles by political prisoners and their supporters in Iran, from the mass hunger strike against executions by more than 1,500 inmates at Ghezelhesar prison, through the weekly hunger strikes by prisoners in their ongoing “No-To-Execution Tuesdays” campaign that have been conducted for more than two years, to the heroic attempt by protesters in Isfahan to stop a public execution there.
The statement does include some points that we think require qualification or an expression of respectful disagreement. For example, the original Open Letter included repeated expressions of “abolitionist” politics – the political trend within left-wing academia in the U.S. that has in recent years spread more broadly in the left here and which calls for the immediate abolition of police and prisons. To a much lesser extent, the “anti-colonial Iran” statement echoes those ideas, as with the slogan “no to prisons,” and we should explain why we disagree with this perspective.
As Marxists, we belong to a movement which has always opposed the anarchist slogan “abolish the state” and with good reason. We are absolutely opposed to the oppressive forces of the capitalist state and share with anarchists the ultimate aim of a society free of all the instruments of state coercion. To build that society, however, we are convinced that in overthrowing capitalist rule, the working class and oppressed people will need a state of their own, including prisons, with which to maintain order and repress the forces of counter-revolution.
When it comes to building united movements such as that in solidarity with Iran’s political prisoners, we think it best to avoid any unnecessarily divisive political points and that in future, just as Marxists should not attempt to include in such joint statements points in favor of a future workers’ state, we recommend “abolitionists” refrain from insisting on their particular slogans.
Another point where we think we must at least add qualifications appears at the end of the following paragraph:
“As collectives and individuals who have for years organized against western and Zionist imperialist wars and occupations, as well as against the Islamic Republic’s state violence inside and outside Iran’s borders, we know how difficult it is to step outside mainstream geopolitical framings, familiar but dehumanising, and stand in solidarity with communities whose reality and struggle do not fit the binaries of ‘good vs evil’, ‘us v’ them’, ‘west vs the rest’. Yet the communities across the globe who are oppressed by multiple local-global forces at once cannot afford the privilege of choosing between their oppressors as the ‘lesser evil’.”
To be sure, we reject the campists’ insistence that to oppose imperialism one must choose to embrace all of its opponents like Iran’s dictators and cover up for their crimes – indeed we look forward to the day that the Iranian masses overthrow their rulers, and we encourage all their struggles for justice to move in that direction. However, keeping in mind the contradictory role of ruling classes like Iran’s that we have described, in military conflicts such as the ongoing U.S. and Israeli attacks, we believe that revolutionary socialists and all democratically-minded people have a side to take.
To the extent that Iran’s rulers have enabled the military resistance to the imperialists, their actions have coincided with the masses’ interests in defending the country. The blows Iran have delivered the U.S. and Israel have weakened those imperialists’ domination of the entire Middle East and thus improved the potential for mass struggles throughout the region. Those successes have, of course, temporarily strengthened the Iranian dictatorship, but this consequence is a lesser evil compared to the imperialists’ succeeding in their professed aim of inducing a collapse of the state and entire society into anarchy and civil war akin to what has taken place in Libya. And Iran’s democratic and revolutionary socialist forces will only be able to win the support of the masses in their struggles against exploitation and oppression by proving that far from undermining the defense against imperialism, they are its greatest champions.