To see why any denunciation of the Islamic Republic assists Trump’s war against Iran, you simply need to look at impact rather than intention. This is a core part of the materialist perspective, and it’s why so many of the antiwar Americans who’ve looked into the concept of “manufacturing consent” have also come to Marxism. When Zohran Mamdani or other social democrats decry Iran’s government, it objectively helps in selling the war, even when they say they’re against the war. To get a better sense of where this position comes from, though, and which particular forces are pushing it right now, we must examine the analyses on Iran that have been put out by Jacobin. It’s a publication that provides a way of trying to reconcile the “antiwar” or “anti-capitalist” position with the State Department socialism which Zohran actually represents.
An example of these efforts to bring together two contradictory tendencies is when history professor Afshin Matin-Asgari, in a Jacobin essay from this January, described an Iranian political faction that he framed as upholding the most reasonable perspective. This was a perspective that, while claiming to be against the attacks on Iran by Washington and the Zionist occupier, sees institutions like the Revolutionary Guards as enemies. According to this view, the RG are part the problem, and therefore must be separated from the economic system. Matin-Asgari explained how amid the U.S. escalations of recent years…
…a plethora of public statements and open letters demanded a “paradigm change in the ruling system.” These statements came from scholars, human rights and civil society activists, lawyers, former and current political prisoners, trade unionists, women’s organizations, repressed ethnic and national groups, and purged regime dissidents. They converged on several key points: the release of political prisoners; the freedom to form parties and associations; the end of state control over the media; the transfer to the government of massive economic assets controlled by the Supreme Leader and unelected institutions; and a halt to the involvement of military institutions, primarily the Revolutionary Guards, in economic affairs. All statements also condemned the US–Israeli attack on Iran and rejected the prospect of “regime change” through foreign intervention or violent uprising…
Though the protests have been forcibly contained for the moment, the political impasse the Islamic Republic has imposed on a restive and by now desperate society persists. Addressing this impasse requires a significant political change, something the regime adamantly refuses to even consider. Nor have Trump’s declarations of support for protesters had any perceptible impact on the ground in Iran except for strengthening the repressive hand of a regime that blames the protests on US and Israeli intervention.
The changes that the Jacobin wing within DSA prefer would include the dismantling of the economic order that the RG are part of. But as explained by Marius Trotter in Midwestern Marx, the economic power of the RG represents a major pillar of working-class power:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are important to mention because Western media coverage often talks about Iran’s state run assets being ‘privatized’, especially during the tenure of President Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), when in reality most of these so called privatizations transferred state run enterprises (under the purview of the Iranian parliament) to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. So, Iranian assets were moved from state control to state control- not privatization at all, not in the neoliberal sense anyway. So, between the Bonyads, the officially state-run sector, and enterprises run by the Revolutionary Guards, the majority of Iran’s economy is either directly controlled by the state or subsidized by it.
In conclusion, the lesson to be taken from this overview of Iran’s economy is that whether you can technically label Iran’s economy as socialist or not (despite the many controversies over what socialism is), it is crystal clear that it is NOT a neoliberal or free market system. The main purpose of this economic model is to 1) Ensure the economic sovereignty and national security of Iran and 2) Provide a safety net for the working classes and rural poor who are the main base of support for the Islamic Republic. It is not about enriching individuals.
It’s with this knowledge about the class character of Iran’s government, specifically the parts of the government which align with the Islamic revolution, that we see how facile the social-democratic view of Iran is. More than being facile, it comes from a fundamentally pro-capitalist ideology, of the kind that seeks to separate itself from the class baggage which supporting capitalism entails. This is the kind of pro-imperialist and anti-communist politics that’s “de-classed,” professing to be on the side of “the people” or of “democracy” while being allergic towards taking a side in the capitalist vs. worker fight.
As Trotter also points out, liberals and even some Marxists ignore the class conflict within Iran, as well as the historical context behind how this conflict became the way it now is. The Iranian proletariat (and the “hardliner” faction which aligns with its anti-imperialist interests) is struggling to overcome the influence of not just Iran’s oligarchical class, but also the cosmopolitan “middle” class. This is a class that was made much larger by the achievements of the working class, whose dedication to resisting imperialism allowed Iran to become so advanced. Those within the affluent, liberal-minded layer now seek to undo the working-class gains and sell the country out to the imperial blob, forsaking national autonomy for personal gain. This is the true nature of the campaign to disempower the Revolutionary Guards: a project that could only bring about neoliberal privatization, because realistically the multinational corporations and banks would of course take over if Iran were to dismantle its proletarian state elements.
Yet given the ways that social-democracy and academic leftism portray these forces within Iran, one would think that these forces are the most “revolutionary,” the most left-wing. This is the contradiction and the trap of social democracy: it employs revolutionary phrases or aesthetics, while serving capital in every way. The key to this kind of political deception is a consistent omission of class analysis, of language that gets to the core conflict of labor vs. capital. In the absence of this analysis, it becomes easy to rhetorically merge the concept of socialism with petty-bourgeois NGO cosmopolitanism, of the type that’s behind these “left-wing” calls for ending state economic control. The problem is that this de-classed framework of understanding is the default framework within the bulk of antiwar politics. The more we put forth a clear class analysis, the more that this will change, and the better equipped the antiwar movement will be to wage a coherent anti-imperialist struggle.
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