In a moment like this one, all parts of our class and geopolitical conflict are moving extremely fast. Every day, we are seeing new accelerations in a revolutionary process that was always going to be activated, but that we couldn’t understand until it reached its present stage. This is my summary of the most important aspects within what we’re seeing and hearing right now:
—Everything that’s going on with Iran can only be properly grasped when put in the context of the successive, self-reinforcing popular revolutionary victories we’ve seen during this last half-decade. The first of these victories was when the Donbass workers, after almost a decade of struggle against the U.S.-installed Nazi regime in Kiev, convinced Russia’s bourgeois government to intervene on behalf of the threatened Donbass peoples. When Russia successfully rescued these peoples from ethnic cleansing, and showed its strength in fighting off NATO, this inspired anti-imperialist movements around the globe. Russia’s Ukraine operation was part of why the Sahel had its revolutions in the summer of 2023, and why Palestine’s resistance launched the Al Aqsa Flood operation.
—Since Al Aqsa Flood, there have been additional revolutionary actions; but many of these actions have been reactive in nature, rather than acts in which the revolutionary side first makes an advance. Yemen’s Ansarallah has implemented its blockade in response to the Gaza genocide, while Lebanon and Iran have taken great new measures in self-defense against the Zionist entity’s aggressions. Iran’s defiance has become so incredible that this is inspiring peoples across the Arab world to rise up against Washington’s military occupations. These popular revolts may bring the demise of the monarchy in Bahrain, which would represent an active advance for the anti-imperialist forces.
—We must not respond to these positive developments by falling into crude anti-imperialism, where somebody expects multipolarity in and of itself to bring the USA’s defeat. “Multipolarism” rests on the idea that the victory of the anti-imperialist forces is inevitable; which is true in the sense that imperialism will inevitably die, but this vulgar kind of politics doesn’t comprehend that fact in a materialist sense. The Marxist concept of revolutionary optimism is based within the recognition that history cannot stay still, and that the forces of liberation will triumph when they’ve been sufficiently tested by history. The “multipolarist” position doesn’t see this need for testing different political practices, and applying rigorous scrutiny to whether they can actually bring the struggle forward. This is why the fall of Syria flew in the face of the multipolarist narratives, which paint a picture of Washington’s enemies as always being on the right track and always headed for victory.
—These problematic analyses have certainly colored how many alt media consumers view Iran. The reality is that Iran’s government hasn’t been unified behind an anti-imperialist position, and powerful pro-U.S. elements exist inside Iran that have successfully blocked resistance efforts many times. Now these elements are being majorly sidelined, because the liberal reformers have come to be seen as betrayers by the Iranian masses. This means Iran is in a far more solid position as a source of resistance than it was just a year ago; but we have to recognize this as being the result of an active struggle by the working-class forces, not an outcome which was simply assured by the flow of history.
—The lesson we must take from this is that complacency kills the anti-imperialist struggle’s chances for success. By complacency, I mean expecting for Washington to be defeated by movements or governments which aren’t controlled by the working class. The essence of the problem with “multipolarism” is that it lacks class analysis. The bourgeoisie vs. the working class will inevitably behave differently towards imperialism, with only a proletarian-based movement being capable of rejecting the empire’s offers to sell out. We should of course support any country or movement that’s fighting imperialism, even if it’s bourgeois, but this reality about the class dynamics of anti-imperialism cannot be ignored.
—This doesn’t mean that the revolutionary forces will automatically be able to thwart the enemy’s schemes when they’ve become sufficiently proletarian in character. Cuba is a workers state, and the balance of power makes it so that Washington can starve Cuba’s people no matter how well this workers state handles its task. The point is not to blame victims, but to build the kind of solidarity that can get us closer towards defeating the aggressors. Which we will do, if we know how to take advantage of the new openings that Iran’s victories will create.
—These openings come from how the American masses see their government’s destruction of the economy, and how the world’s people are coming to love Iran. The U.S. empire must have known the masses would be radicalized in these ways by this war, but our rulers didn’t care, because they’ve embraced a posture of acting without regard for public opinion. This both makes the enemy more dangerous, and gives it greater potential to catalyze mass backlash. Whether this backlash is effective depends on whether we apply these lessons from the last several years; the lessons about class struggle being central to the anti-imperialist struggle, and about capitulation towards the imperial enemy being unacceptable.
—Soon, the enemy will again change its posture. It will replace the brazenness of the Trump administration with the policy of the social democrats, who seek to rebrand U.S. imperialism as an ally of Palestine and the Global South. This is what people like the Iranian reformers would love to see: a version of Washington that they can justify making friends with, because it cloaks itself in the aesthetics of progressivism. Though Iran’s compradors may not be able to sell their country out, such a scenario of capitulation may still happen with Russia, even though Russia will certainly win in Ukraine. Watch out for a revival of woke pro-western tendencies within Russia, especially as Washington tries to move in on China.
—Those of us in the USA obviously can’t control how these other countries respond to our government’s maneuvers, but we can undermine the hegemon’s plans from within. With the acceleration in global anti-imperialist resistance, we’ve been able to absorb critical lessons about what it will take to defeat the Washington banker regime. If we apply these lessons, we’ll fulfill our role in this uprising.
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