Iran: State, Civil Society, and Social Emancipation

Abstract

The ongoing socio-political upheaval in Iran since the presidential elections of June 2009 reveals developments so unique and new that they can potentially transform not just Iran but the entire Middle East, indeed the whole world. A new reality has arisen from the self-activity of the Iranian people that far outpaces any projected theory of liberation. It is high time to re-conceptualize theory as wholly immanent within the movement from practice. While emerging from under a theocratic Islamic regime, the movement poses questions that are universal in nature at a time when the rise of religious fundamentalism has become a global phenomenon. In light of the failures of global capitalism that have put a question mark over the very survival of humanity on this planet, is Iran condemned to undergo the vicissitudes of a secular capitalistic development? Rather than present any ready-made answers, serious questions have to be asked about the direction of the movement given of the tragic consequences of the 1979 Revolution. Despite the fact that the Left has been thoroughly marginalized, it appears, at least to this author, that the developments in Iran are a great opening to Marx's Marxism. Given the deep and widespread intellectual fermentations there, Marx's concept of genuine social emancipation can provide a way forward in Iran's ‘civil society revolution’.