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Revolutionary, critical solidarity from Iranians As Iranian Marxist Humanists, we oppose the inhuman terrorist attacks which killed thousands of U.S. workers, women, minorities, immigrants, and international tourists on Sept. 11. Even though no group has taken responsibility for these heinous acts, so far all the evidence points to terrorist cells trained by the Wahabi-indoctrinated Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Iranians who have suffered a great deal under an Islamic fundamentalist regime for the past 23 years have felt tremendous grief over these attacks. On Sept. 18, 4,000 people in Tehran came out for a candlelight vigil and chanted "America, America, our condolences" and "Down with terrorism." Many others have held smaller candlelight vigils in various cities in Iran. We totally oppose the view that "U.S. society as a whole has to pay for the policies of its government." This is the opposite side of the same coin of Bush's imperialist mindset which wants to punish the destitute people of Afghanistan for the crimes of the Taliban and bin Laden. There are two worlds in each country: the oppressors and the oppressed. Just as we stand with the innocent people of Afghanistan against U.S. military retaliation, so we stand with Middle Eastern, Central and South Asian people of Muslim or Arab origin who have themselves fled reactionary regimes in their lands and are becoming targets of racist attacks in the U.S. In our view the inhuman nature of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 clearly separate these attacks from any genuine expression of opposition to U.S. imperialism and U.S. capitalism. Only those who have no grasp of Marx's analysis of capitalism and the Marxist-Humanist alternative to it, can attribute an "anti-imperialist" or "anti-capitalist" quality to these attacks. The perpetrators of these attacks are mass murderers who want to establish their own capitalist- misogynist reign of terror throughout the world. In 1979, when Khomeini used the taking of American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran to declare himself an anti-imperialist par excellence, some on the Left cheered the embassy takeover. When Raya Dunayevskaya responded with her political-philosophic letter "What is Philosophy? What is Revolution?" she called this a "counter-revolutionary anti-imperialism" which disorients revolutionaries from working out a philosophic ground for creating a new humanist society. (See page 4.) Now the facts of history reveal how damaging the hostage crisis was. The Iranian masses were saddled with a constitution that codified the rule of a supreme religious leader. What followed was a full-blown counter-revolution which executed tens of thousands of Marxists, Mujahedeen (Iranian Muslim leftists) and other leftist youth, Kurds, women and Bahais. The U.S. masses in turn were saddled with jingoistic rhetoric and a decade of Reaganism which turned the clock back on all their hard-won rights. Today, "What is Philosophy? What is Revolution?" as a document from the Marxist-Humanist archives stands more true than ever. Presenting native reactionary rulers and ideologies as the lesser of the two evils in comparison to U.S. imperialism can only lead to counter-revolutionary ends. We need to face up to the philosophic vacuum that has allowed the capitalist, racist, misogynist, homophobic teachings of religious fundamentalism to gain support. Facing up to this reality demands laboring at a vision of total human liberation as we express our opposition to U.S. militarism and its planned attacks on the Afghan masses. As members of the Other Middle East we express our solidarity with the Other America against terrorist attacks and Bush's militarism. Anjoman Azadi |
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