Despite the previously blossoming rhetoric about "social facts," "fraud," and the Green Movement (only the third term refers to something that actually exists), news out of the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to suggest that the Iranian populace voted strongly for Ahmadinejad, despite true-but-meaningless affirmations that "Millions of Iranians believe that the Interior Ministry, under Sadeq Mahsouli, and the clerical leadership have disenfranchized them," as James Buchan writes at the New Left Review.
The Iranian lower and lower-middle class probably voted for Ahmadinejad for a pretty simple reason: Ahmadinejad stands for economic and cultural populism and populist nationalism, alongside political illiberal-ism. This accords with something socialists have known for a long time: freedom to assemble is a booby prize when you're too hungry to go to a protest.
So it was fascinating to read Iranian economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani's account of one of the Ahmadinejad government's moves towards economic populism, particularly its policies of subsidy reform. According to Salehi-Isfahani, Ahmadinejad wants to sharply reduce the energy subsidies that currently total some 50 billion dollars a year. The bill under consideration will allow the government to raise an additional 10 to 20 billion dollars a year in revenue. The bill will then redistribute half of that money to low-income families; a family of five will be able to expect 1000-2000 dollars a year. Median spending in 2007 was about 3800 dollars a year. The current energy subsidies are, as Salehi-Isfahani adds, highly regressive: the majority go to families making over the median income.
There are myriad potential problems with this proposal, well-laid out by Salehi-Isfahani, but they are not here my primary concern. During the elections and their violent aftermath, a pissy cat-fight erupted on the left: between "supporters" of Ahmadinejad who didn't support Ahmadinejad and "supporters" of the Green Movement whose actions had precisely zero impact on the Green Movement. In the latter camp, we had commentators noting that "Overall, there is little to suggest that workers or even the very poor have a deep material interest in electing Ahmadinejad, any more than his opponent." This seemed like bullshit then, and smells like bullshit now, a post hoc touch of argumentation attempting to strengthen the fantastical thesis that the Green Movement had a shot at revolution. What they had was a shot at getting shot.
Some will object that direct cash transfers are not a sustainable development strategy (as though we know what that looks like, anyway). This type of populism will have some inflationary effects, less if the reform and redistribution is handled carefully. The question of "sustainability" is itself a chimera. Subsidies that contribute to carbon going into the atmosphere are unsustainable by definition. Still, the existence of such policies, scarcely mumbled about on the Marxist left during the upsurge's more beguiling moments, helps explain why the working-class voted for Ahmadinejad, and why several months after the election, 81 percent of Iranians polled believed that Ahmadinejad was the legitimate president, according to a poll posted at a well-known Stalinist web-zine. Accurate polling in an autocracy is doubtless a problem, but as a rough hint at societal sentiment, the finding is quite significant.
Riotous Middle Easterners, like rojo rojito Latin Americans, are pleasant folk to project revolutionary fantasies upon. Sometimes such fantasies reflect reality. Sometimes not. In Iran, its social and political news now absent from the headlines, with the ridiculous exception of its nuclear program (and perhaps someone can present me the brief for why Iran shouldn't have nuclear armaments, while a raging Israel has over 200 of them), the latter is transparently the case. Little tidbits like that which Salehi-Isfahani give us a clue as to why events in Iran turned out the way they did. Worth paying attention to, even without the frisson of impending revolution.
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You know accepting Ahmindejad as president won’t get the protesters released, right? http://antonyloewenstein.com/2009/10/30/the-futil...
What would you propose they do about getting out of prison? I don’t think forgiving the government is as easy as you seem to think it is. You can’t totally ignore it either.
What do you propose they do? What do you propose we do?
Why this guy is ok with one type of authority and not ok with another is beyond any sane persons attempt to understand his logic. Maybe if an authoritarian government is cruel “enough” it is legitimate?
Well, are you okay with the imprisonments? Those victimized have told the world about their predicaments already. but nothing’s being done.
I said, what do you propose we do?
Are you OK with child molestation? Presumptively not.
No I am not, but I’m just saying you can’t overlook the unlawful imprisonment of the protesters. You just seem to be saying that Ahmidnejad was elected president, he’s the boss, so it’s something they’ll have to deal with or as you put it “it’s meaningless”
The affirmation is “meaningless” because the fact that “millions” believe something to be true doesn’t make it true. It means a beleaguered minority believe something.
A million blogs comment on the human rights situation in Iran, constantly, liberal and conservative. A million bloggers support sanctions, or armed overthrow, or a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The two issues are related.
Yes,but that doesn’t mean anyone who is in favor of releasing the prisoners is in favor of sanctions or armed overthrow or nuclear strikes. Can you not understand that? Can’t you stop for a second and acknowledge the treatment of the protesters by police was wrong?
Oh and I’m sure you’ll be heartbroken to know that the green revolution group isn’t necessairly a U.S. government operation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti...
No. What you seem to be missing is that there’s a difference between two things being related and one thing necessarily entailing the other. This has nothing to do with morals or ethics–it’s a logical problem.
Please by all means give me a list of the things I need to acknowledge, though, before writing about the social bases for Ahmadinejad’s support.
I promised myself I would never argue another lefty over Iran but I have been following this bill very, very closely, and I don’t think you get the gist of it. EVERY SINGLE DAY since it was passed, something new has happened (regarding the bill). first the MPs said: “we’ve passed it, but we won’t let it leave parliament.” then they said:“the government lied in its reports” then Ahmadinejad said: “we’re going to take the bill back anyway” … ad nauseum. I think the problem is in fact too much “logic” on your part. NO SIR. That’s not the way it works in Iran.
Also, in regards to the opposition: nobody, inside or outside Iran, pro or anti government has been able to figure what they will mean for the future of Iran. So I’m really surprised when those on the left (not you specially, I mean at large) come up with analysis full of “this is the way ti is” rhetoric. Really? they know us better than we know ourselves? By the best academic estimates, only about 15% of the Iranian population was pro-revolution in 78. I certainly hope this doesn’t lead to another revolution, and I am not comparing the two incidents. I’m just saying the student movement, and the opposition movement at large may come to mean many different things, but certainly far from a “fantasy”. One thing missing in much of the analysis is the definition of opposition in a large framework, and not just pro-Mousavi forces. Something has happened in the hierarchical power structures of Iran, which goes way beyond a couple of kids wearing green, and I don’t think the left really gets that. Or at least, so far, I haven’t seen any acknowledgment of it.
As for fraud, I will probably live my entire life not knowing what happened in this election. Who really won. But the expediency council was by law the body who could have answered these questions, and the leader never let that happen. The left constantly forget that the other conservative candidate, the creator and head of IRGC came on TV two nights after the election and accused the government of fraud. This was someone sitting far, far from Mousavi’s end of the table. Yes, close to Rafsanjani, but much closer to Khamenei then Rafsanjani.
The polls are irrelevant, when for my entire life they’ve been telling me that the phones are tapped in Iran and have always been (I mean, that is a prevalent mentality amongst people which has existed pre-revolution and thus makes a phone call a terrible way to conduct a poll). At the same time, when Ahamdineajd was confronted with his dire economic record, EVERY SINGLE statistic they put forth he said: “this was created by a Zionist entity/body/institution/etc. Foreign institutions are all attached to a Zionist entity one way or the other and can not be trusted”. I heard that line from his mouth over and over again. So when he rejects any form of western statistic, there’s no reason to accept this one (which he has. pro-government websites have quoted it a million times over.)
Pedestrian,
The logical end-point of your comment is that I can’t write anything about Iran, because other Western Leftists have totally mucked it up, and I’m a Western Leftist, therefore, I will inevitably write something stupid.
What I wrote was full of hedges: “suggest,” “probably,”“rough hint,” “doubtless a problem,” “clue,” etc. But you’re telling me that external polling is worthless, that glossing the work of an Iranian, Farsi-speaking economist is flawed, and that I should accept or reject statistics based on what the government thinks of them. If the news out of Iran invalidates his, and as a result my, analysis, why not write to Salehi-Isfahani? He seems like a nice guy and responds to comments at his website.
I didn’t make a statement about where the opposition ended up, I wrote of how “events in Iran turned out the way they did.” In my first sentence, I said, the Green Movement is real. Present tense. I said that given the constellation of forces then active, what they had was a shot at getting shot. They did get shot. The “fantasy” is that of Western leftists and liberals, not the Iranian people, which should have been very clear in my article.
I do trust the poll as a “rough hint,” exactly as I wrote, and think it’s a mistake to call it or polls in general “irrelevant.”
I have my own idea of what the social bases of Ahmadinejad’s support are. You don’t seem to agree. And you’re Iranian, and I’m not, and you read Farsi, and I don’t. I welcome the enormous knowledge you bring to this issue, but it’s difficult to discuss these topics when you seem to assume I’m operating in bad faith. Give me enough facts and I’m happy to change my mind. Already did once.
Max,
First of all, you’re the only “Western Leftist” blog where I leave a comment. I mean, I read the rest, but I’m just tired of arguing, so I’d rather remain a silent reader than a commentator. So like it or not, you’re taking all the blows
I’m saying the Iranian economist wrote this weeks earlier, and should have noted the ambiguities that are always inherent in things like this in Iran, which he didn’t. Just yesterday Ahmadinejad went back to parliament and asked that the bill be given back to government. Before this, before it was passed, centrist news outlets like Tabnak were writing that this bill even if approved, would go nowhere and had their own arguments for it (never mind the opposition). So there were people who knew of what was coming. I don’t think I would write Efahani unless I had a burning desire to do so. It’s just not that important to me.
Anyways … I hope you realize how new some of this (certainly not all of it) is for us, and how hard it is for us to take it in, the rest of the world aside. Among friends and blogs who are strongly pro-opposition I try to remind them of the other side and always get labeled all sorts of things, including “basiji” (as if I mind) or “mullah lover” or whatever. In the leftists blogs I was really taken aback by this labeling of the opposition as brainless American junkies with Twitter and Youtube wired in place of their brains. As I mentioned somewhere else today, I really think the most positive thing to come out of the aftermath of this election was the discourse that began in the power hierarchy itself. Things began to fall apart, or at least no longer looked as concrete. This may mean many things in the long run, but we just don’t know what yet. So I personally think they had more than “a shot at getting shot.”
I’m still trying to learn what the social bases of Ahamdinejad’s support are, so you’re probably way ahead of me there. The Statistical Center of Iran just released their annual report on Iran. I am hoping that reading that may help. I also intent to do some traveling outside the capital. That too I really, really hope will as well.
Yes, of course, I agree that the reformers and the Green Movement will mean much in the long run. My intervention was an incestuous little note to the Western left, saying, “We fucked this one up. Please take note of some facts and let’s all including me try to do better next time.“
I think we understand the reform movement far better than we understand the social bases of Ahmadinejad’s support, which is not to say we understand either well. This is in part because many liberals think the reform movement looks like them: all political and cultural opening. Maybe it does; certainly that explains Danny Postel’s, or Zizek’s, enchantment. IF Ahmadinejad indeed got that 63 percent, understanding the social bases of support is vital to understanding contemporary Iran. The extent to which that has been missed strikes me as enormous, and unfortunate, and the brusque dismissals, “demagoguery,” “charlatanism,” “unsustainable populism,” etc. are misguided, because they beg every question that needs answering.
So if I don’t pay attention to the Green Movement, it’s due to an effort to try to correct for that.
“the social bases of support is vital to understanding contemporary Iran” — that’s something on which we completely agree.
My daily dose of reading includes all the famous pro-government sites. The comment sections I try to give particular attention to. The problem is that, just like the main pro-reform sites, there’s just so much propaganda and ooey gooey rhetoric that it’s hard to make out anything.
I think if possible, it would be great for the reformists to shut up a while and try to learn more about the other side. Whether we live inside or outside Iran, we get sucked into our own vortex of followers and we forget there are other people who think differently, that they even EXIST (and this is something that happens to people from all sides). Sadly, you can semi-attempt to mobilize and plan chaos. It’s much harder to organize silence. And time isn’t always on our side.
What I really am worried about are the students and the 18/19 year old kids. Two 19 year old students I know who were active in Mousavi’s campaign before the election and have been in prison since, were just sentenced to 5 years in prison each. I knew them closely. These kids are geeky programmers who weren’t even at the demonstrations. Their crime is only being involved in mousavi’s campaign. That sort of thing just breaks my heart and completely takes away my ability for logic or understanding.
Max,
I would like to thank you espressly for unfolding some expert-details/facts/arguments on
the Israel-Palestine conflict via/on Pedestrian’s blog [Full Stop]
German
I would say “my pleasure,” but that’s not exactly the case.