Bob Afakean’s cult still bashing Iran as imperialists gear up for military strike
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Vice President Joe Biden speaking for the Obama administration recently green-lighted an attack on Iran by Israel:
“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.” (1)
In a recent issue of Revolution, RCP issued a call for a protest at the UN against Iran:
“On September 23 and 24, 2009 Ahmadinejad is expected to take part in a UN meeting. We will be there in order to be a voice of the recent uprising of the people of Iran against the Islamic Republic; in order to show our solidarity with thousands of political prisoners and the families of those who were brutally butchered by the security and police forces of the IRI during street protests or in dungeons of Evin and Kahrizak; in order to show our solidarity with millions of youth who are fighting for a new and liberatory society; in order to show our solidarity with millions of women who are determined not to be crushed by a medieval patriarchal system and today are constituting the front rows of battle against the IRI.
We invite the Iranians and people in North America who have wholeheartedly supported the uplifting struggles of the brave people of Iran against the criminal IRI, to join us in this protest.” (2)
This latest RCP-led event is part of a long series of similar anti-Iranian, pro-war events directed against the Islamic Republic. Once again, the RCP and an exile group known as “the Communist Party of Iran (Maoist)” lay the ideological groundwork within the imperial “left” for war against Iran. Another organization with a similar approach is the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a well-known CIA asset that claims to be influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Some of these kinds of organizations, which are based outside of Iran, exist because of continuing patronage from the imperialists. They are objectively pro-imperialist despite their Marxoid rhetoric. Revisionism doesn’t wear a “kick me” sign. Revisionism has to be exposed through science.
A history of Crypto-Trotskyism
RCP abandoned Maoism when they criticized the Maoist conception of people’s war as outdated. Bob Avakian, guru of the RCP, criticized the idea that the world revolution should be conceived as a global people’s war as “Lin Biaoist” in the early 1980s. According to the view articulated in Lin Biao’s Long Live Victory of People’s War!, the world revolution is a giant people’s war that advances from the global countryside to the global city. In this struggle, both the Western imperialists headed by the US and the social imperialists are pitted against the masses of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In this worldwide struggle, the socialist countries are conceived as base areas in the global people’s war. Thus proletarian internationalism plays a big role in this model. According to this view, in the final analysis, the world revolution hinges on the struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In other words, the traditional Maoist view has a Third Worldist orientation.
In place of the people’s war approach, Bob Avakian advances the Trotskyist view of Permanent Revolution. According to the RCP’s view, socialism in a single, Third World country is not sustainable without help of the “advanced” economies of the First World. In other words, it is possible to have a revolution in a single, Third World country, but unless that revolution spreads to “advanced” economies of the First World, socialism will fail in the Third World. Underlying this is the Theory of Productive Forces, a theory criticized by the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. Whereas Mao criticized the Comintern because of its meddling, the RCP, like Trotsky, attempted to re-invent a Fourth International in order to coordinate their world revolution, in order to place Third World revolutions in the service of the First World. The Maoist model places primary importance on people’s war in the Third World. By contrast, Bob Avakian’s model, like Trotsky’s, sees First World revolution as decisive. Thus, like Trotsky, Bob Avakian advances a doctrine that is both ideologically and organizationally chauvinist and social imperialist, not proletarian internationalist. RCP’s approach is thoroughly First Worldist in orientation.
Part of RCP’s criticism of so-called “Lin Biaoism” is also a criticism of the Maoist idea that there is a principal contradiction. Rather, RCP advances the agnostic, post-modern, unscientific view that there is no principal contradiction. Thus RCP does away with the Maoist-Third Worldist view that the principal contradiction is between exploiter versus exploiter countries, the global city versus the global countryside, the First versus the Third World. RCP also does away with the Maoist claim that the principal contradiction is between oppressor and oppressed nations. Rather than seeing the defense of Iran, as a Third World country, as a priority, RCP is spreading anti-Iran sentiment in a war atmosphere. In practice, RCP thinks it is more important to criticize Iran and Islam than to criticize imperialism. Thus, RCP does not land on the side of the oppressed and exploited peoples of the Third World. Rather, RCP has entered into a tacit alliance with the US and other imperialists. RCP has abandoned the Maoist conception of the broad united front against imperialism.
RCP promotes the line of “left” compradorism in Iran. RCP has entered into an alliance with groups like the Communist Party of Iran (Maoist) and similar outfits. These movements know that they have little hope of toppling the Islamic regime at present, which has a degree of popular support because of its quasi-social democracy and quasi-anti-imperialism. So, these “left” comprador movements seek to promote an imperialist invasion of Iran as a means to elevating themselves to power. They have perverted Lenin’s strategy of revolutionary defeatism and replaced it with its opposite. Lenin’s approach was to transform the war between Germany and the Russian Empire into a revolutionary war of the proletariat. In other words, the Bolsheviks struck when the Russian empire had been weakened by World War 1. The key difference here is that Lenin’s strategy was one that led to the defeat of an imperialist country, the Russian empire. By contrast, the strategy of these “left” comprador, fake-communist organizations is one that leads to the defeat of an oppressed country and the strengthening of US imperialism. In other words, these movements are willing to ride to power on imperialist tanks, just as Trotsky toyed with the idea of hitchhiking with the Nazis during World War 2.
RCP reads from the State Department script on Iran
Even though the Bush administration is out of power, its neo-con policies have been largely adopted by the Obama administration. During the Bush administration, RCP disseminated anti-Iran and anti-Islamic agitation and propaganda. RCP continues its anti-Iran policies today. RCP has joined the anti-Iranian choir that includes the mainstream media, the Zionists, and the US government. In previous issues of their newspaper, RCP denounced the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, echoing the neo-con and liberal hawks. Thus RCP takes the line that Third World countries, like Iran, do not have the right to defend themselves from imperialism by any means necessary. Thus RCP agrees with the State Department. RCP also echoes Khrushchev, who was criticized by Mao for backing down during the Cuban missile crisis. RCP condemns Iran over its supposed treatment of women, just as the neo-cons do to split the women’s movement in the imperialist countries from the anti-war movement. According to such an outlook, since imperialism will bring modernity and bring freedom to Iranian women, imperialist control of Iran is progressive. Thus RCP aligns itself with the neo-cons who criticize “Islamo-fascism” in Iran. This is no surprise, since both the RCP and neo-cons share the same Trotskyist outlook.
Sources:
1. http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07072009.html
2. http://revcom.us/a/175/iran_call-en.html



