IRAN’S BUSINESS ELITE, TOO, IS A ‘DISSIDENT.’
by Rostam Pourzal
http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/pourzal270609.html
With mass rallies for government accountability dominating the news from Iran since June 12, Western audiences are missing the underlying controversy that polarizes the country’s electorate. We hear much about the boastful social conservatism of president Ahmadinejad, whose contested re-election on June 12 fueled days of bloody protests led by his moderate challengers. But the battle is also about welfare reform and private property rights in an economy that has been state-dominated since the Islamic Republic was established thirty years ago. Whether Iran’s national oil revenue should now be directed away from grassroots priorities emerged as a major election issue this year. All of Ahmadinejad’s three challengers promised to promote investor-friendly policies if elected.
The opposition insists that Ahmadinejad unfairly buys voter loyalty with consumer subsidies, low interest loans, and similar “handouts.” The president has especially enraged the managerial class with his wildly popular monthly rallies in the provinces, where he orders funding on the spot for the infrastructure needs of common folks. A special flashpoint is the pace of a long-anticipated privatization and deregulation drive that was officially launched a year ago but was not embraced by the Ahmadinejad administration.
Among the four approved hopefuls that ran for president recently, Ahmadinejad is the least enthusiastic about the neo-liberal reforms demanded by Iran’s corporate interests. Several of his advisors and cabinet ministers and even a Central Bank’s director general have stepped down or been dismissed after challenging the president’s “unscientific” intervention in markets. At least one of them, former economic affairs minister Davood Danesh Jafari, campaigned for a rival candidate this spring.
Not surprisingly, Iran’s business journals invariably promote Ahmadinejad’s challengers. They regularly deride his welfare-state initiatives as “fiscal irresponsibility” and lash out in Cold War language at his close ties to left-leaning Latin American leaders. They demand that Iran align itself instead with the “international community” in order to benefit from globalization.
As they clamor for “meritocracy” and “performance” to overtake affirmative action programs, it is not uncommon for Iranian business columnists to quote the Washington-based Heritage Foundation — of Ronald Reagan lineage — which ranks Iran almost last among nations in its Index of Economic Freedom. In a similar vein, articles that lament how Ahmadinejad has brought back the “irresponsible anti-capitalist climate” of the early years of the Revolution appear in Iran’s opposition literature about as often as conservative Western media condemn the 60s’ “hippie generation” for permissiveness.
Ahmadinejad’s leading ballot-box rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is allied with Iran’s most influential “free market” advocate, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. His was the face next to Mousavi’s on the candidate’s billboard advertisements this campaign season. Rafsanjani is best known for his “structural adjustment” program that met popular resentment and resistance from 1989 to1997. Since he was defeated by Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of 2004, Rafsanjani has led a public crusade against the winner’s zeal for social spending, which he characterizes as Gadaparvari, or dependency promotion.
The powerful state Expediency Council, which Rafsanjani heads, led a reinterpretation of Article 44 of Iran’s constitution that last June mandated a downsizing of the government in favor of private investors and contractors. The sale of state-owned industries is advancing faster than ever, and the introduction of private banking was followed late last year by the opening of the first foreign bank branch. A comprehensive intellectual property protection law is finally in effect and legal restrictions on foreign investors are being relaxed in order to circumvent UN-imposed trade sanctions. Yet Rafsanjani’s powerful allies complain bitterly in public that Ahmadinejad loyalists in the bureaucracy impede progress towards the competitive economy envisioned in the new law. This year Mousavi adopted Rafsanjani’s 2004 campaign pledge to institute “an economic revolution” in which improved efficiency would result from deregulation.
Mohsen Rezaie, a former top military commander who dropped out of the race in 2004 and ran against Ahmadinejad again this year, is the Expediency’s Council’s secretary and a confidant of Rafsanjani. Rezaie’s recent campaign boldly touted him as the “Architect of a New Economy” in which Ahmadinejad’s two most cherished initiatives (which Rezaie ridiculed as “Komonisti”) would be abandoned. Under one of the programs, named Sahaam-e Edaalat, millions of largely low-income households have received bundled shares of profitable state-owned industries at half-price. The cost of the discounted shares is deducted over time from the small investors’ dividend incomes. Ahmadinejad boasts about this as his favorite kind of privatization. Ahmadinejad’s year-old Maskan-e Mehr initiative, under which hundreds of thousands of first-time home buyers are offered 99-year leases on state-owned land and affordable loans to build modest apartments, was also targeted for termination by candidate Rezaie.
The other investors’ delight among Ahmadinejad’s rivals is former speaker of the parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who ran for president in 2004 and again this year. The center piece of Karroubi’s economic platform this year consisted of suggested first steps towards de-nationalization of Iran’s oil industry. The scheme was devised by the candidate’s chief economic advisor, a self-described Milton Friedman devotee named Masoud Nili. It envisioned the formation of a non-government entity that would take control of all domestic refining and distribution of oil and make every citizen 18 years or older a shareholder. Karroubi’s other top advisor, Abbas Abdi, a fervent promoter of trickle-down economics, often refers to the proposition as “empowering the people.” They neglect to mention how, over time, better endowed Iranian (and eventually non-Iranian) investors could acquire large blocks of the proposed oil shares from low-income citizens and form Iranian equivalents of unaccountable Western oil giants.
Iran’s state budget (including tens of billions of dollars annually for popular subsidies and services) relies far more on oil revenue than on taxation. Thus, to advocate removing oil from state control is, in the Iranian context, equivalent to the right-wing “citizen empowerment” protests this year in the US by tax day “tea party” tricksters. More generally, like the resentments that Ronald Reagan exploited and galvanized against the civil rights gains in this country, the backlash now energizing Iran’s opposition candidates is in part a reaction to the attention the government showers on less fortunate Iranians.
In short, Iran’s fiscal-conservative candidates are disputing the re-election of a social-conservative president. Which conservatism is worse? Should the Western progressive community side with the libertarian candidates? The answer may not be as straightforward as our mainstream media pretend it is. Instead of granting the opposition our unconditional support, we must demand that the movement shed its corporate bedfellows and isolate Ahmadinejad by championing the cause of underprivileged Iranians.
(Rostam Pourzal is a Washington, DC-based political analyst specializing in the politics of human rights)
This article puts Ahmadinajad’s populism in a longer term historical perspective which demonstrates that his is simply part of a more general populism around privatisation. The extract below demonstrates quite how empty is the talk of some on his populism. Essentially his policies amount to a reprise of the voucher system which led to the rise of the oligarchy in Russia:
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer250/…250/ ehsani.html
““Justice Shares”
In a controversial move, Ahmadinejad’s government has insisted on allocating up to 40 percent of the public assets lined up for privatization to low-income people and state dependents. In Ahmadinejad’s first two years in office, nearly 6 million people, including pensioners, state employees and the registered low-income deciles of the population, received the equivalent of $2.5 billion in stock in various public corporations under the rubric of “justice shares.”[13] This program has come under severe criticism from both liberal and conservative proponents of the privatization program. The government is claiming that the poorest 10 percent of the public are receiving stocks and dividends. Severe poverty has become an acknowledged crisis in Iran, with an official 8 million people living below the poverty line.[14] Since there are no reliable statistics to determine who falls within this category, it is clear that the administration is using politically connected distributive institutions, such as the conservative Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, the Basij militia and pensioners, as its database for doling out stocks and dividends. Recipients have been handed stocks worth an average of 20 million rials ($220), hardly a remedy for severe poverty.
Aside from doling out dividends on stock of public companies whose profitability is questionable at best, this “privatization” is modeled on the disastrous voucher distribution programs of Russia and Czechoslovakia in the 1990s, which, at least in the case of Russia, led to the rise of the oligarchs.[15] These impoverished recipients can be used to form reliable voting blocs or as tools of repression of dissidents and popular disturbances. As in Russia, a few well-connected actors can quickly pool at bargain prices the nearly worthless stock widely distributed among a poor and vulnerable population and use it to create corporate empires. Despite vociferous objections from the Majles,[16] the government is continuing with its distribution of “justice shares,” at least until the presidential election on June 12.”
Comment by johng — 28 June, 2009 @ 6:39 pm
…and this is really excellent. Erlich author of the Iran Agenda, a dissection of US Imperialism’s activies in Iran, was in Iran over the last few months. Gives a really excellent analyses and contests the ‘colour revolution’ interpretation: The centrality of the ‘twittering classes’ is an invention of western media according to him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGSplRR7oI
Comment by johng — 28 June, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
And just been witnessing continuing demonstrations and scuffles with the police which apparently took place yesterday. There is a serious question here. Where are the equivilant of Chavez supporters? If this really is a Venezuelan type situation where is the self-organised part of the movement to defend the government against the revolt of the propertied classes? A few contrived events outside the British embassy with what looked like a ragbag collection of professional activists and thats about it. It really doesn’t make much sense.
Comment by johng — 29 June, 2009 @ 12:55 am
#3
John
Sorry, it is you who doesn’t make sense here. I don’t fully agree with the line taken by Noah and John Wight, but no-one has suggested that the Iranian government is a progressive one worthy of the support of the working classes, unemployed and farmers in the same that the Bolvarian republic of Venezuala is.
Your perpetual act of perpetual faux bewilderment is annoying enough at the best of times, but when combined with wilful misreading of what other comrades are saying it becomes overpoweringly condescending.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2009 @ 1:18 am
Well they have suggested that its progressive enough that we should give no support to demonstrations against it, and denounced and decried anyone who does. I think, just in this case, its your faux bewilderment thats rather striking.
Comment by johng — 29 June, 2009 @ 1:49 am
Once again, removing posts that disagree with your pro-Iran regime stance.
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:24 am
I beleive I removed a comment by Jim Denham, not becasuue of his stance on Iran but becasue Jim Denham is banned from this blog - Denham has used comments on this blog before to both defend gross racism against muslims, and also to racially abuse one of the blog’s contributors.
there is no “pro Iran regime stance”, there is merely a questioning of the dominant liberal narrative.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:31 am
It is not merely the dominant liberal narative. Juan Cole, Chomsky, Zizek, have all come out strongly in favour of the protests. What there is, is an overwhelming support across the political spectrum from left to right, in favour of the protesters, with a small, minoroty view in favour of the present regime. The fact that Ahmadinejad was personally responsible for reimporting Holocaust denial and anti-semitism back into the western world (whatever the context) should make him a no-go arrea for anti-racists (as opposed to those who say they are anti-racists.)
Comment by apollo — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:47 am
No Andy, you removed a post from me which said that the above article was a disgraceful attempt by JohnW to whitewash a reactionary and repressive regime.
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:54 am
#9 I removed it. You’re a troll.
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:57 am
#8 - apollo, this is not good enough when analysing current events in Iran. Ahamdinejad’s stance on the Holocaust is clearly outrageous and should be condemned. But to now use that as justification to topple a government which has just won an election is merely an attempt to further demonise a regime that finds itself a target of western propaganda and continuing efforts to destabilise it.
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:01 am
A regime which hangs gay men, treats women as second-class citizens, prevents left and workers’ movements from organising and forces conformity with religious theocracy.
A regime which is led by a holocaust denier who has invited Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke as a guest to a holocaust denial conference.
And by a man who personally took part in organising massacres of leftists and communists during the early 1980s, indeed, he offered this as an “alibi” when accused of being involved in the US Embassy siege.
JohnW accuses every opponent of the Iran regime of being either a supporter of Mosavi or a stooge of imperialism - not so JohnW, we are supporters of the left and workers’ movement in Iran.
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:03 am
And this “troll” crap smacks of university undergraduates playing “mid-earth” fantasy games - what an infantile and stupid phrase!
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:16 am
The problem is that the West may be demonising the regime, but the regime has enough demonic elements to warrant progressives not joining in with the demonisation, but supporting those the regime are oppressing and murdering. It’s really not very hard to do. Chomsky, Cole and Zizek have all managed this.
Comment by apollo — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:18 am
Reports of gay men being executed in Iran for being gay has been jumped on and propagated by apologists for western imperialism and ‘humanitarian intervention.’ It stands on a par with stories about babies being ripped from incubators by Iraqi troops during the occupation of Kuwait. Likewise their provenance and accuracy have been seriously questioned, even refuted by some credible commentators and sources.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/pourzal220507.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050815/kim
http://www.asylumlaw.org/docs/sexualminorities/Iran072706.pdf
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Oh, so everything in Iran is fine then. Sorry.
You seem to me John, to be a man backed into a corner and when i read your apologetics, I’m reminded of Zionists wriggling out of every criticism of Israel by trying to pretend it’s all just motivated by anti-semitism.
Comment by apollo — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:31 am
TROLL. DELETED
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:33 am
Nobody’s saying everything in Iran is fine, but I’m certainly not about to line up to indulge in the current popular sport of ‘let’s topple the regime’.
I’m sure the two of you were first in line when it was Iraq under the microscope.
I’ve provided links to credible sources calling into question the deluge of anti-Iran propaganda, and all you can do is reply with the same reductive points.
This is trolling.
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:40 am
I would suggest that anyone who consistently fails to address the central arguments in a debate is not in a position to call others trolls.
Comment by apollo — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:41 am
Not really. You’ve refuted one point, the execution of gay men. It’s great if Iran doesn’t executie gay men, but they’ve threatened to execute the protestors, have beaten, murdered, tortured and killed them, all under cover of a total media black out. It would be helpful if you could address why exactly it is imperative for the left to support the regime, given that others, Cole, Zizek, Chomsky have all managed to find ways of opposing it without standing up for imperialism.
Comment by apollo — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:55 am
#20 He hasn’t refuted that either. According to the article he posted, consensual homosexual activity warrants the death penalty in Iran but the civil rights people need specific documented “cases” to show this is actually happening. So it may be happening, I would say that it is likely to be happening, but until we have hard evidence then we need to be a bit circumspect about what we say.
The other thing is, I don’t think John W should be moderating debates that he is centrally involved in. If accusations against me and “Ray” for being “nonce apologists” can stay up all day on this site then the relatively mild remarks of “communist” can stay up as well, in my view.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:04 am
#20 - No, I haven’t refuted anything. I’ve posted links to articles that have appeared in progressive publications in the West which ask some serious and pertinent questions about the received truths on that specific issue.
Cole, Zizek, and Chomsky are three commenators and analysts on the left. Your question is about as valid as me asking you why you can’t maintain the same anti-imperialist stance as Chavez, Galloway, the Chinese CP, PSL, Campo Antiimperialista, and other left wing voices and organisations on this issue.
I’ve posted articles and comments stating my views on this. I wonder if you could engage now with the article posted at the start of this thread rather than attempt to re-tread all that’s gone before?
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:04 am
Pete:
The other thing is, I don’t think John W should be moderating debates that he is centrally involved in. If accusations against me and “Ray” for being “nonce apologists” can stay up all day on this site then the relatively mild remarks of “communist” can stay up as well, in my view.
Reply:
Good point. Though I’m sure you’d agree that drowning out discussions with empty noise do little to further meaningful discussion. Calling people ‘nonce apologists’ is cleary unacceptable and in a perfect world would certainly have been removed. Nobody can be watching over a blog 24/7 though, can they?
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:06 am
No Apollo, White has not refuted anything - he just deletes posts he disagrees with.
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:08 am
#24 - There really is nothing to refute when your post contains nothing except a personal insult.
It really doesn’t take much to insult people behind a pseudonym now does it?
It’s called trolling.
Comment by John Wight — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:12 am
“Communist”.
You have moved from the substantive issue under discussion towards a tedious debate about the moderation policy on this blog.
Previoulsy you were continualy making the same points over and over again, disregarding the fact that John Wight had already answered this point - whether or not you agreed with his answer - he had replied to it.
Both of these are forms of participation in an Internet debate that are disruptive of genuine dialogue and are evidence of trolling, the attempt to make all the discussion rotate around you disruptive aganda.
Now clearly anyone following this debate on here would notice that probably the majority of comments are highly critical of John Wight’s position; and Martin Wicks has even posted articles to the front page of this website contradicting John Wight. So we are not afraid of debate or disagreement.
So your complaint is without substance.
As a matter of fact it simply is inaccrate to say that the Islamic Republic of Iran executes people for simply being gay. If you look through the records of the hughly resppected, although Washington leaning NGO, Human Rights watch, you will see that the biggest areas fo human rights violations in iran are the executions of people for crimes committed while they were minors, the ocassional use of torture against political oppnents, and the mass deprtation of Afghan refugees without due process of law. In all these instances the record of comparable human rights abuses by the USA is similar or worse.
Iran does have a terrible record on gay issues, but it is not alone on that.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2009 @ 11:56 am
#23 Fair enough, John, on both points you make.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 29 June, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Andy,
You could end people derailing with conversations about moderation if you simply applied a consistent policy. from the outside it appears that whoever is currently “in” can say whatever they like, while any voices critical are deleted on the flimsiest of pretexts, this leads to completely one-sided debates, and to the impression that anyone disagreeing with you -or JohnW- has no answers to your argument, when instead their side has been deleted.
I laughed when I saw that jim denham had been banned; he may be tricky to argue with but he’s no racist; why not leave his postings up and let people judge for themselves?
Comment by nt9n — 29 June, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
Jim Denham is a racist, both in his defence of Martin Amis’s call for discrimination against Muslims, and his repeated racist name calling of our contributor Tawfiq Chahbourne, after he had been warned about it. Jim is also guilty of making repeated threats of violence on here (after the pubs are closed). When he has commented here it has been extremely disruptive as he swiftly polarises the debate around his own agenda.
It is impossible to provide a completely fair moderation of this site becasue we have literally hundreds, sometimes thousands, of comments every day, and we have lives to lead so we are not watching the comments 24/7; we have a general policy of being very liberal and allowing most comments to stay. Sometimes people cross the line in being too personally abusive, or too tedious in continually repeating the same inane point, and thus crowding out and preventing any genuine dialogue, so we sparingly delete those comments.
if you think you could do better,, please feel free to set up your own blog, and we will see how you get on.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
It’s difficult to keep one’s temper and continue to debate politely with someone who simply denies that Iran executes gay men.
LGBT organisations estimate that some 4,000 gay men have been executed by this regime.
It’s rather like debating with a holocaust denier, or with someone within our own communist movement who really believes that the victims of the Moscow trials really did commit the crimes they were accused of.
Comment by communist — 29 June, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
#30
Firstly let me make it clear that I am completely opposed to criminalising any form of consensual sexual activity between adults, let alone the terrible use of the death penalty to enforce social conformity; and i don’t see to defend the indefensible. the Islamic republic does exceute people it shouldn’t.
But I am still sceptical of your argument for a number of reasons.
Firstly there is moral relativity, that Western liberals worry about the oppresion of gays in Iran, but the same liberals are utterly silent, for example, about the oppresion of blind people in Tibet, where despite the best efforts of the Communist party, traditional Buddhist practices of total social ostracisation, beating and even killing sightless children is done with impunity.
Another reason for doubt, is that I have also been told repeatedly that the modern day Cuba government, oppresses LGBT people, despite the President’s daughter leading the 2009 pride demo, and government programmes to increase respect for people of different sexual orientaion; it is a racing certainty that gay marriages will be legal in cuba before they are in the USA; and I have even been told that the DDR oppressed gays, even though East germany had a record on the issue better than any Western wuropean state - it decriminalised gay sex in 1957, and the SED party instructed state bodies to end all harrasment of gays the same year - gay sex was fully legalised in 1967, removing nearly all legal discrimination. (gay sub-cultures remaned under suspicion only in so far as they involved potential contact with the West)
thridly, as far as I can work out by discussion with my Iranian freinds the socially constructed consciousness of “being gay” exists no more in Iran today than it did in mediaeval britain. There are obviously men and women who enjoy same-gender sexual attraction and activity, but the social identity or collective consciousness of people defining themselves by sexual orientation is absent (the same is pretty much true of the Arab world as well, freinds of mine from Baghdad simply didn’t believe that gays existed before arriving in britain.) Remember that socially iran is largely autarchic, isolated, and conservative.
As such, the repression and oppression of same-gender sexual activity in iran is not a conscious or defining feature of the state’s ideological programme, but is part of a generalised repression of all non -conformist social behaviour, (including especially membership of the ba’hai faith). There is no organised pogrom specifically of gays in Iran, like we are seeing at the moment in uganda (but about which western liberals are largely silent), there is instead a generalised clampdown on all non-conformist social behaviour which includes same-gender sexual activity along with a lot of other activity that the state disapproves of.
Homosexual sexual acts are illegal in Iran and as you correctly infer technicaly they can attract the death penalty, but “being gay” is not. That is not to minimise how wrong the law is, but it is necessary to both be accurate and understand Iranian society. there is no legal discrimination against a category of person, nor seeking to create such a category in order to make a scapegoat of it. instead there is the closely related but socially slightly different repression of criminalising a sexual act that only part of the population have the proclivity or desire to participate in.
There is also a gap between the law as it stands on the statute book, and the law as it is applied, particulrly the degree to which bribery and patronage mediate the application of the law. In practice, where there are exceutions for homosexuual acts (and I am not justifying, just clarifying) there is invariably a further aggravating factor - like blackmail or rape.
So i am also sceptial about the scale of the number of executions you quote, bearing in mind the ideological loading of such numbers games. remember that some of those claming these high numbers of executions have also been thoroughly discredited by their fictitious and hugely exagerated numbers of deaths in dafur.
So i do not deny that some executions of men take place for sexual activity, nor do i defend it, nor seek to condone it. But from my reading of the Human Rights reports, executions of men for consensual sexual activity are much rarer than you make out, and it is not a defining featire of the Islamic republic, any more than the huge scale Jim Crow lynchings of African Americans defined the overall character of US democracy.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 June, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
Richard has usefully compiled three of the most interesting recent discussions of the connection between the disputed election in Iran and the regime of accumulation in the IRI:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/06/ahmadinejad-and-accumulation.html
Comment by johng — 29 June, 2009 @ 10:21 pm