The successful counter-offensive that Iran is waging represents the latest part in a series of revolutionary victories. This is the series of mass anti-imperialist efforts that came about in response to the great new aggressive campaign which Washington embarked upon after World War II, when the U.S. was turned into the only true imperialist power and finance capital sabotaged America’s relationship with the USSR.
It was in this political landscape, brought about through anti-democratic schemes by Wall Street, that Washington made the plans to carry out an unprecedented wave of wars and neo-colonial coups. This new phase in imperial aggression had the nature of an attempt to compensate for the decay of capitalism, which was no longer a rising force and could only resolve its internal crises through new wars. Finance capital’s offensive got far, yet it couldn’t overcome the forces of popular revolution, not truly. This is why we’re now seeing Washington overwhelmed and humiliated as soon as it’s tried committing to a fight with the Islamic Republic.
At the same time that the U.S. installed the Shah, it was going on a rampage against the world’s working class, including the workers movement in the United States. Those of us in the USA need to revisit this part of history; it shows what kind of role we once within anti-imperialist efforts, and which institutions we’ll need to rebuild to regain this role. After Wall Street fortified its control, the domestic forces it chose to go after were the Communist Party, the centers of working-class culture, and organized labor. The enemy was pressing forward very rapidly. Its next plans were for a third world war with the Soviet Union, and a replication of the Hitlerite model through anti-communist concentration camps (which could be justified by such a war). But the banking regime was never able to get this far, because the next wave of global revolutionary momentum would spill over into American society.
This momentum, embodied in the Chinese revolution, the Korean revolution, the decolonization movements, and the following workers victories, could have such an impact partly because of imperialism’s internal fissures during that time. Like Washington is failing to win support from major allies for its war against Iran, the U.S. found itself in dispute with the European powers over the question of committing towards a confrontation with the Soviet Union. The enemy lacked the means to assault the world’s proletariat on the scale that it wanted to, and the revolutionary forces took advantage of this. When Vietnam’s people had their revolution, and Washington reacted by committing genocide against them, this provoked an uprising within American society.
This counterculture movement was in itself a failure, and we should absolutely confront why it was a failure; boomer leftism, with its selfish idealism, was what killed the American communist movement. The imperial state’s success in redirecting that particular trend, though, did not stop the global upswell that this trend came from. The anti-imperialist united front was able to provide critical help in Vietnam’s victory, and that pivotal moment assisted Iran’s people in their own rebellion against global finance.
The Iranian revolution is one link in a chain of popular triumphs that the anti-imperialist movement has been able to sustain, even throughout the darkest periods in the post-war era. Though the CIA could murder hundreds of thousands in anti-communist purges, Vietnam won. Though the Zionist colonization project has expanded, this has gone along with a proportionate expansion in the Palestinian liberation struggle. All the anti-communist purges of the 20th century couldn’t stop the Sandinista and Bolivarian revolutions, and the “War on Terror” couldn’t stop Ansarallah’s victory. Now Haiti is carrying out another successful revolt against neo-colonialism, despite Washington’s intensifying efforts to crush Latin America’s people. Whenever the masses have managed to mobilize, and do so in a way which lets them stand on their own as an organized fighting force, they’ve made sustainable progress in the struggle. Every time the enemy has gone on the attack throughout this era within capitalism, it’s been met with a counter-force, and this is something we need to remind ourselves of amid all the perils we face right now.
The persistence of popular revolutions, even amid imperialist warfare that’s taken tens of millions of lives over the decades, shows how capital has long been existing in a fundamentally precarious state. The game has changed since the original era of colonization, when the aggressors could easily subdue entire regions. Colonialism and imperialism could spread so effectively during that era because at the time, capitalism was on the ascendancy; it was in the process of upending the world’s economic and social relations. But after this process consumed the entire globe, inevitably the colonized countries would gain new advantages. They could build up their economies, their militaries, and their technological capacities to the effect that many of them are now serious competitors with the imperialists. Russia, China, Iran, and other formerly subjugated societies are on their way to becoming the primary drivers of humanity, which existentially threatens finance capital.
Ultimately all the world’s exploited people will break free from the rule by banking, letting them develop to the spectacular degree that countries like China are developing. The great obstacle that’s holding us back from this is the central power which American finance holds—including over all of the bourgeois elements which still exist inside the countries that have partly freed themselves from the “blob.” This obstacle will only go away when those within the USA have fulfilled our own duty, and overthrown the Washington banking dictatorship. This is why I’ve emphasized the history of American class struggle so much while talking about Iran: the only practical thing that Americans like me can do for Iran is rein in our own government, with the goal of making this government extinct. Which we can only do if we understand our own struggle’s past.
The story of how the 20th century’s worldwide revolutionary wave enabled popular struggle in America, and how these mass gains have kept building on themselves, gives us a sense of how to act. We must take example from the liberation struggles of the Global South, and thereby bring the growing worldwide popular momentum into the USA. We will work in tandem with those resisting our government’s violence to bring down the beast, in the final sense.
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