Why Imperialism Fears Iran: Insights from Samir Amin

Dr Saulat Nagi

“Violated, dishonoured, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it in reality,” Rosa Luxemburg said. From Iraq to Syria, from Libya to Palestine to Lebanon, death – a guiltless negation of utopia – dances naked to Dionysian music, depicting the wild side of human experience. When Engels said, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism,” his words probably did not help the ordinary intellect grasp his reasoning because, by then, only a small part of Europe had entered capitalism. Nevertheless, history is now revisiting its colonial past, and the slaughter of innocent human beings has become the new norm. A persistent live-streaming of genocide is taking place before the eyes of the ‘civilised’ world, yet it chooses to slumber in silence – a silence that perpetuates the hideous process of violent primitive accumulation, alternating with accumulation through dispossession, and the destruction of a surplus yet superfluous population expelled from the productive process by force of arms. Holocausts are not exceptions; they are integral to capitalism. Today, Engels’ warning confronts us in plain sight.
A large-scale liquidation of humanity is impossible without war, but at the peak of capitalist anarchy, the exchange society, having abandoned its niceties, finds an alternative in genocide. Paraphrasing Eric Hobsbawm, when humanity confronted the choice between socialism and barbarism, it failed to choose socialism. On the contrary, Rosa Luxemburg argued, it chose “the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity”, in one word, barbarism.
Iran has proved itself a bulwark against imperialist forces. By standing tall against their might, it has offered a lesson to the oppressed of the world about the fragility of its hegemony. Israel, on the other hand, is bent upon turning Lebanon into another Gaza, and Gaza, the symbol of resistance and international apathy is going through a literal holocaust. Both Gaza and Lebanon are stark examples of the fusion of primitive accumulation and accumulation through dispossession. The Western World with its stylised barbarity is exposed to the people of the Global South. Barring a few countries, the alienation of the rest of the Global South is understandable. Led by the comprador bourgeoisie, it is marked by internal polarisation.The ever-mounting inequalities in income distribution imposed by the liberal order in the name of development are causing social unrest and a general disquiet.
It is interesting to note that, despite crippling Western sanctions and prolonged isolation, Iran has managed to steer its economic ship through the tempestuous waters of a world economy governed by the law of value. Whereas capitalism demands integration into the world economy, it simultaneously produces polarisation both within underdeveloped societies and across the world system as a whole. Capital requires subordinate forms of growth and does not permit a state under its clutches to accumulate and control capital independently. In a nutshell, it demands a neo-colonial state.
Imperialism successfully destroyed Serbia, Libya, Iraq and Syria – national-popular states that largely ran command economies, controlled their own accumulation, and were less vulnerable to external constraints imposed by metropolitan capital. It was precisely for similar reasons that they were targeted: despite participating in the global economic order, they did not fully expose themselves to international capital. The destruction of a bourgeois state and its conversion into a comprador state is nothing new to metropolitan capital.
The mantra or jargon of capitalism as a force that develops the productive forces may be correct, but this is only a half-truth, because when capitalism reaches its limits, it wastes no time in destroying those forces. The other existential question that remains unanswered is: for whose benefit is this development carried out? Are productive forces being developed to create a gigantic commodity structure that generates unlimited profit by selling waste to consumers for the benefit of a few, or to create a society free of classes? There is a fundamental difference between the two. If it benefits the bourgeoisie alone, such development is ultimately useless. The Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions have highlighted the alternate dimension of development oriented towards social needs and collective emancipation. These revolutions, occurring in relatively backward societies, not only created previously non-existent or rudimentary productive forces but also successfully developed them into a particular form of socialism.
To understand the “Iranian effect” – a term coined by Alastair Crooke – one needs to understand Samir Amin’s theory of delinking. Formulated at a critical moment when the Soviet Union was effectively committing hara kiri, it not only explained the Chinese and Vietnamese experiences but also offered countries of the Third and Fourth Worlds an alternative path out of the neoliberal order, enabling them to build their economies on a national-popular basis, if not an explicitly socialist one.
As I have written elsewhere, China, Vietnam, Cuba and Iran are the children of their revolutions. During the revolutionary process, they produced their own Jacobins and perhaps their Thermidorians as well, but the revolutionary spirit that sustained them against all odds refused to die. The Iranian Revolution took a different course, yet all these countries managed to create what Samir Amin calls auto-centric societies. Despite existing within the world capitalist economy, these countries maintained “control over the process of accumulation, permitting in return a homogenisation of society” – that is, satisfying the needs of all segments of the population. Samir’s concept of delinking revolves around this point.
An auto-centric society is not necessarily an anti-capitalist society, since it corresponds to the logic of central development. However, it develops the productive forces not for the benefit of the bourgeoisie alone but in the interest of its people, either while keeping a socialist perspective in view or as a national bourgeois state pursuing its delinking from the international law of value. Delinking for Samir is not synonymous with auto-centric development, but the latter invariably leads to delinking. As mentioned above, communist countries, including the Soviet Union and China, followed this path. Instead of following the neoliberal panacea peddled by the IMF, countries of the periphery – which are not necessarily pre-capitalist – can pursue a similar strategy to develop their economies independently. What Samir asks of them is that they define “the criteria of [their] economic rationality on the basis of constraints and social relations internal to the nation”.
The economic constraints imposed by the IMF and the World Bank are crippling by design. Reducing dependence on them and adjusting economic priorities to social needs rather than competing within the world economic system on the latter’s terms, are among the salient features of delinking, a process that may or may not culminate in socialism. “It being understood,” Samir warns, “that the socialism in question remains a plan for society, largely ahead of us, and not a reality already achieved.” This note of caution alludes to the Chinese model of delinking, a project whose ultimate destiny remains uncertain.
Samir has his own definition of a national capitalist state. For him, “A state is not formally national capitalist, even if the local bourgeoisie is in command of the apparatus, insofar as it does not control the process of accumulation…For this to happen, the bourgeois state must possess an ‘auto-centric national economy’.” The Iranian bourgeoisie not only controlled accumulation through the oil trade but also refused to “submit its economy to the demands of transnationalisation” – or what Samir understood as rapid integration into world exchange.
External pressure often reinforces the very national consciousness that imperial power seeks to weaken. During the Second World War the Soviets reinvigorated their spirit of the fatherland. Similarly, the US aggression helped Iranians not only revive their revolutionary spirit but also rediscover their fading nationalism.
Every war has its dialectics. Paraphrasing Rosa Luxemburg, war unleashes the reactionary forces of the capitalist world, but it also generates forces of social revolution that ferment beneath the surface. Whereas the aggression destroyed Iran’s civilian infrastructure, it has also, with nonchalant ease, consolidated Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz – an instrument of hegemonic leverage over the West. The decadence of imperialism appears increasingly evident. The process that began with Gaza’s genocide is approaching its logical conclusion. From the decline of Zionism to the emergence of a multipolar world, all possibilities now appear within sight. The last nail in imperialism’s coffin is being driven by the people of Iran.
Sadly Pakistan, led by a comprador bourgeoisie, will not be able to find a weaker link in the chain of capitalism. Delinking will not be possible until the people struggle and topple the parasitic class to build an auto-centric developmental model of the economy. Until then the darkness will continue to reign, even at the end of the tunnel.
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: God’s Republic: Making and Unmaking of Israel and Pakistan is available in Pakistan and on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com