EDITORS—Nima and Prof. Marandi explore the potential for improvement or rapid degradation of the situation in the Middle East and beyond, depending on how Donald Trump and his likely cabinet of Neocons decide to play their cards. Iran’s rapid development of advanced weapons capable of neutralising the West and Israel itself, have changed the equation in West Asia, and rendered much of America’s global strategic power virtually dubious if not obsolete. Besides, Israel’s intransigence leaves little room for manoeuvring, and Tehran may be forced to act.
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STANSFIELD SMITH—“Compatible left” was a term used by the CIA to describe those on the left it has deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist world rule. This left has dominated the US left since the end of World War II, in large part a result of government operations repressing the communist or anti-imperialist left. Historically, this compatible left that the CIA worked to cultivate rejects actually existing socialism and formed a “third camp” or “plague on both houses” left between capitalist and socialist countries. Providing a “respectable” alternative to the anti-imperialists, it used its progressive flavor to lure in radical youth, activists, workers, and intellectuals.
The CIA is correctly seen as a ruthless organization that overthrows democratic governments considered a threat to US domination. But this overlooks the CIA’s “gentler” work: underwriting and encouraging a compatible left, one which looks to the Democratic Party for political leadership. The CIA has secretly funded and managed a wide range of these groups and individuals.
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OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Considerable controversy continues to swirl over the issue of whether Israel did or did not inflict significant damage on Iran on October 26. I trust the voices of Crooke, Ritter, Macgregor, McGovern and Johnson more than I trust Israeli claims or those of the Pentagon. Iran is a technologically advanced entity, a country of 100 million people with powerful alliances and major historical grievances with the rules-based order. Its enemies do not seem to understand that.
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JOTI BRAR—Prominent theoreticians besides Ludo Martens who attended the yearly May Day seminars in Brussels during the 1990s included Harpal Brar (Great Britain), Tamila Yabrova (Ukraine) and Nina Andreyeva (Russia). It was greatly to the credit of Comrade Ludo and the PTB that they made contact with so many currents within the former Soviet Union that were struggling to come to terms with what had happened in their country and who continued to uphold the banner of Marxism. It was unfortunate that there was no party or individual with the prestige to bring together the various warring factions and establish a common line, however.
This has been a recurring theme in our movement since the loss of a unified leadership – divisions abound and the impetus to overcome them has never yet been strong enough to create meaningful unity of action across international borders or to unify separate groupings within each country in the way Lenin and the Comintern were able to after the October Revolution.
The truth is that this will probably continue to be the case until a new socialist revolution is successful, and is led by a party that is guided by scientific socialism, restoring the prestige of Marxist science in practice, inspiring the masses of the world, and earning the right to be seriously listened to by Marxists and revolutionaries around the world.
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EDITORS—Joti tracks the reasons for the Dems’ recent embarrassing defeat at the polls, and the UK Laborites’ dismal performance.
TOPICS: UK/US working class apathy and alienation from the political establishment and taking part in elections, a fact that worries the ruling elites as elections serve to legitimate their rule. • Trump’s MAGA people may represent the last contingent of true believers in the US promise of an actual popular democracy, notes • Joti describes in detail how WOKISM (identity politics) is nothing but a shameless ruling class tactic to disarm the working class by introducing issues that serve to divide it, while presenting the state (in the hands of one or another wing of the plutocracy) as their saviours. Insofar as identity politics replaces the actual class struggle, in which economic factors play the preponderant part, it buries the possibilities for revolutionary social change. This is seen in issue after issue. Radical bourgeois feminists, for example, taught women in the 1980s that their “natural” enemy was men, not the ruling elites. Bourgeois feminism ended up subverting women’s power. • Same with the “woke” anti-racist movement. Capitalism, in fact, needs racism; it is one of the ideologies fuelling and justifying colonialism and the ruthless expropriation of people around the globe, often using racist imperial soldiers who come from the exploiting country’s working class.
