Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/occupied Palestine) 02.07.2025
Instead of defending Iran, a semi-colony state against Zionist and American imperialism, “socialist struggle” adopted the bourgeois pacifist position of the bureaucracy of independent workers’ organizations in Iran.
Socialist Struggle writes, quoting the union bureaucracy:
“We, independent labor organizations and grassroots organizations in Iran, have no illusions that the U.S. or Israel intends to bring us freedom, equality, or justice, just as we have no illusions about the oppressive, interventionist, warmongering, and oppressive nature of the Islamic Republic.
We call on all labor unions, human rights groups, anti-war movements, environmental activists, and peace-loving forces around the world to raise a united voice in demanding an immediate end to the war, bombings, slaughter of innocents, and the destruction of the environment. We ask them to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the Iranian people and other peoples in the region to end genocide, militarism, and authoritarian oppression.”[i]
The position of socialist struggle, just as the position of the bureaucracy of the independent unions in Iran, is tilted against the interests of the world working class to defend Iran while it fights against imperialist countries. Trotsky has already answered the bad position of right-wing centrism. He wrote:
Trotsky: “I am not sufficiently acquainted with the life of the individual Latin American countries to permit myself a concrete answer on the questions you pose. It is clear to me at any rate that the internal tasks of these countries cannot be solved without a simultaneous revolutionary struggle against imperialism. The agents of the United States, England, France (Lewis, Jouhaux, Toledano, the Stalinists) try to substitute the struggle against fascism for the struggle against imperialism. We have observed their criminal efforts at the recent congress against war and fascism. In the countries of Latin America the agents of “democratic” imperialism are especially dangerous, since they are more capable of fooling the masses than the open agents of fascist bandits.
I will take the most simple and obvious example. In Brazil there now reigns a semifascist regime that every revolutionary can only view with hatred. Let us assume, however, that on the morrow England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will answer for myself personally—in this case I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain. Why? Because in the conflict between them, it will not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil. If Brazil, on the contrary, were to be victorious, it would give a mighty impetus to the national and democratic consciousness of the country and would lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship. The defeat of England will, at the same time, deal a blow to British imperialism and give impetus to the revolutionary movement of the British proletariat. Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks, one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers![ii]
There was another party that tried to combine Marxism and Zionism. Its name was Mapam or the United Workers Party, which was a close party to the P.O.U.M. in Spain.
The correct revolutionary position during the imperialist attack on Iran, a semi-colonial state, was revolutionary defense, which means defense, but without giving the regime any political support.
Endnote:
[i] https://socialism.org.il/maavak/2025/06/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9F
[ii] Leon Trotsky Anti-Imperialist Struggle Is Key to Liberation An Interview with Mateo Fossa (September 1938)