Thursday, September 3, 2026

3714. Trotsky on the Rise of Fascism in Germany

By Leon Trotsky


Though expelled from the USSR, Trotsky and the Left Opposition still considered themselves a faction of the Communist International. Until Hitler came to power, they tried to influence the Comintern and the German reds, to return them to the Leninist precepts of internationalism and internal democracy.

They did not (yet) support the rise of a Fourth International. It was these events in Germany, and the failure of the German Communist Party and the Communist International that lead to Trotsky’s call for a new, “Fourth” Communist International. We include one 1940 article on the nature of Fascism that Trotsky was working on the time he was murdered by a Stalinist agent. The rest of this collection deals specifically with the rise of the Nazis in the early 1930s.

In the following collection of Trotsky’s letters and articles, he is specifically addressing the German Communist Party, which he considered the only realistic organization to stop fascism. His goal was for them to break with Comintern policy, not the Comintern itself. These series of articles and essays, however, show Trotsky’s method in his ultimate break with the Comintern.

We’ve also include a chronology of events beginning with the rise of the workers movement at the end of World War I and statistics on the various elections that the Communist Party participated in.

This page was originally compiled by the Zodiac. The page has been reformatted to conform with the Trotsky Internet Archive. Several additional articles, previously un-transcribed have been contributed by the TIA’s director and other TIA volunteers.


1918: German revolution dies, due in large part to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD belongs to the old Second International. Before the war, it had never held power, only opposition. Class cooperationists, the SPD supported the war. In working to prevent a successful Red revolution, the SPD allies with capitalists and the army, even cooperating with right-wing “Freikorps”, thereby helping train early cadres of the future National Socialist Party (Nazis).

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are both executed by the state. Russian Bolsheviks had counted on a successful German revolution for the survival of their own revolution.

1919: German monarchy folds, the Weimar Republic is born. The Weimar constitution is a standard “social democrat"-style arrangement: workers are granted several “social safety net” programs, while the capitalists (and army) retain with full powers, which they more or less “promise” to never abuse. The first Weimar cabinet is headed by the SPD, and their Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann, in coalition with two capitalist parties, the Catholic Center Party and the German Democratic Party. (NOTE: In the 1919 Reichstag elections, 45 percent of voters support parties which label themselves Marxist.)

1921: All revolutionary opportunity has passed. The Third International (Communist International, or Comintern) initiates a “united front” strategy as a way of strengthening Communist parties in nations where Social Democrats dominated—rather like Germany.

1922: German government is crippled by, and unable to meet, war reparations specified by the Treaty of Versailles.

1923 January: French government sends troops to occupy the Ruhr. Inflation soars, the working class launches massive strikes, the middle class has savings wiped out. It’s an extreme crisis and the government is helpless. KPD membership swells and new ultra-right movements (like the Nazis) grow. But KPD leadership, guided by the Comintern, misses the opportunity. By 1924, events stabilize (with some American aid).

1924 May: Reichstag elections see “Marxist” parties drop to to 33 per cent of the electorate; Nazi strength declines even more drastically.

1924 December: Another round of Reichstag elections sees SPD support grow and KPD drop.

1925: Presidential election. Monarchist general Hindenburg elected president in runoff election against Wilhelm Marx, member of the Catholic Center Party—the latter being supported by the SPD and the liberal capitalist parties—and Ernst Thaelmann of the KPD.

1925-29: Weimar Republic’s stable period. SPD remains Germany’s largest party with powerful support from the working class. No realistic plan for a German social revolution can be constructed without intelligent consideration of the SPD.

Meanwhile, in the USSR, the “Left Opposition” is defeated by Stalinists. In 1927, Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party. In 1928, he’s deported to Siberia. In 1929, he’s exiled to Turkey. Stalinists purge more than just Left Opposition. By 1930, the Communist International and affiliated parties are merely bureaucratic extensions of Soviet foreign policy. The leaders of the KPD are appointees of the Kremlin.

1928 May: Reichstag elections return the SPD to cabinet with Chancellor Hermann MÜller. KPD get a third of the SPD’s vote (Nazis get less than a tenth). This SPD leadership is further right than before and opts for something called the Great Coalition—including the People’s Party—and holds power for about two years.

Meanwhile, the Comintern adopts the ultra-left doctrine of the Third Period and something called social fascism. The doctrine says the collapse of the world’s capitalist nations is supposedly following a handy pattern:
 

  • The First Period (1917-1924): Capitalist crisis and revolutionary upsurge;
  • The Second Period (1925-1928): Capitalist stability;
  • The Third Period (now): Capitalist crises return and proles are ready to rise up again.

The Comintern concludes it’s time to end Second Period collaboration with Social Democrats (and their powerful working class base). In the case of Germany, it means these SPD workers are really just “social fascists,” a sort of left wing of fascism.

1929 Fall: The Great Depression, death knell of Weimar. German unemployment hits 3 million. The already fragile German economy collapses. The populace is radicalized. KPD membership grows, despite alienation from SPD-led unions. The fascists likewise grow, now even attracting financial support from big capitalists. And the storm troops (Sturm-Abteilung or SA) hits 100,000 by year’s end.

1930 March: the SPD Müller cabinet resigns. Never again will Weimar see a majority government. President Hindenburg appoints Heinrich Brüning of the Center Party as Chancellor. Bruening tries to establish a more right wing government but fails to get sufficient support in the Reichstag.

Brüning cites Paragraph 48 of the Weimar Constitution and claims to now rule by “emergency decree.” The Social Democrats helped construct that paragraph, never imagining they’d be the target of it.

1930 July: Brüning’s emergency decrees on budget are overruled by SPD, KPD, and Nazi deputies. Hindenburg dissolves the Reichstag and calls for new elections.

1930 September 14: Election day. SPD votes tumble by 6 percent, while the KPD rises by 40 percent. However, their combined vote falls from 40.4 per cent of electorate to 37.6. The real change is the Nazi vote—up 700 per cent. The Nazis go from ninth to second-largest party. Meanwhile, the Comintern-led KPD dubs this a victory for the Communists and “the beginning of the end” for the Nazis. The Comintern concurs.

Trotsky’s opinion was slightly different. To paraphrase him, the KPD is like a singer who sings wedding songs at funerals, and funeral songs at weddings ... and is soundly thrashed at each occasion.

1930 October 18: Shaken by the Nazi electoral triumph, the SPD decides to back Brüning’s government. With SPD support, Brüning remains Chancellor another 26 months. It is an unpopular rule that only benefits the Nazis. Big business support of Hitler continually increases. The SA is emboldened in attacks on working-class radicals.

Stymied by the SPD-Brüning block, the Nazis focus on gaining control of Prussia’s Landtag (state legislature). Prussia is the largest state in Germany, with over two-thirds of the population. It’s a Social Democratic stronghold. The Nazis, right-wing Nationalists and the Stahlhelm (a counter-revolutionary veterans’ organization), invoke a clause in the Weimar Constitution to launch a referendum to oust the Prussian SPD-coalition government. KPD opposes the referendum.

1931: Over 4 million unemployed.

1931 July 21: KPD leaders present ultimatum to sPD coalition leaders in Prussia: make a united front with us or we’ll back the Nazis. SPD leaders reject it. The KPD backs the Nazis, despite the fact it might put the Nazis in power—though now the KPD calls it the “Red referendum”. Nazis and German Communists campaign together to remove Prussia’s SPD-led government.

1931 August 9: Prussian Referendum fails. SPD stays in control.

1931 September: SPD leaders expel Reichstag deputies Max Seydewitz and Kurt Rosenfeld for open opposition to SPD support of Brüning regime. The expelled deputies favor a united front against fascists.

1931 October: More SPD expulsions/resignations. SPD splits. Left Social Democrats unite with SPD youth, pacifists, and some of the Brandlerite Communist Party Opposition (KPO) to form the Socialist Workers Party (SAP). Six SAP leaders are deputies in the Reichstag.

Trotsky takes a positive attitude toward new group, hoping that its members will overcome SPD centrism. But SAP is a confused body with no real impact on working-class politics. (In July 1932 elections, SAP gets merely 72,630 votes and lose all six Reichstag seats. In the November 1932 election, their vote drops further still. SPD rank and file can not be dislodged from their party that easily. So rather than destroy the SPD in this time of crisis, one should work to save it.)

1931 December: SPD leaders create the Iron Front for Resistance Against Fascism. The organization seeks to engage the old Reichsbanner, the SPD youth, and labor and liberal groups. SPD rallies to the Iron Front, holds mass demonstrations, fights fascists in the streets, and arms selves. This is more than the SPD leaders wanted. But SPD workers don’t care and grow increasingly revolutionary. Meanwhile, the KPD has no ideological concept of a united front—hell, they just supported the Nazis in the “Red referendum.”

1932: Economic crisis deepens. Unemployed: 5 mil. “Social Democratic” state further dismantled.

1932 March 13: Presidential election. Three main candidates: Hindenburg, Hitler, and Thälmann. But the Nationalists also push Stahlhelm leader Theodor Düsterberg—who merely steals votes from Hitler. Last Presidential election, the SPD opposed Hindenburg. Now they support him over Hitler. The Iron Front becomes an electoral machine for the monarchist militarist.

1932 April 10: Run-off Presidential election held since no clear majority was established. Düsterberg withdraws so Nationalists can campaign for Hitler. Hindenburg wins, but Nazi vote has doubled in 17 months. Nonetheless, the SPD hails Hindenburg’s election as a triumph over fascism.

1932 April 14: Brüning has Hindenburg sign a decree outlawing Nazi SA and SS. Brüning thinks this curbs Hitler’s growth. Instead, it will prove to be Brüning’s fall.

1932 May 31: Hindenburg demands Chancellor Brüning resign. Hindenburg picks Franz von Papen of the Centre pary as new Chancellor. The Center party expels von Papen. He is basically Hindenburg’s puppet, without any support in the Reichstag.

1932 June 4: Papen dissolves the Reichstag and calls for new elections.

1932 June 15: Papen rescinds the ban on Nazi private armies. Wave of violence results. Hundreds dead/wounded. Papen bans political parades in fortnight before July 31 elections.

1932 July 17: Nazis march, under police escort, through working class Hamburg. Result: 19 dead, 285 wounded.

1932 July 20: Citing the Hamburg battle, Papen claims the Prussian government can’t maintain “law and order.” He deposes the Social Democrats and appoints himself Reich Commissioner for Prussia.

The SPD once swore to defend the republic against any coup d’etat, from the right or the left. German workers wait for a call to action. The SPD promise to appeal Papen’s coup to the courts. Nothing else happens.

The KPD calls for a general strike. Of course, the KPD’s great “Red referendum” is used to ridicule it.

1932 July 31: Reichstag elections. Nazis are now Germany’s largest party.

1932 September 12: New Reichstag convenes. Papen thinks he can manipulate the Nazis, but they realize they don’t need him. Nazis support the Reichstag vote to censure the Hindenburg-imposed Papen regime (vote of 513 to 32). The Reichstag is dissolved and new elections called for November 6.

1932 November 6: Reichstag election. Nazi faithful have begun to tire of Hitler’s political maneuvers to gain power carefully. Morale drops. In the election, Nazis lose two million votes. Critically: total Nazi vote is now less than the combined SPD-KPD vote. But this is lost on the Comintern and KPD. This would turn out to be the last “free” election of Weimar Germany—and the Nazis failed to get their majority.

1932 November 17: Papen and cabinet resign.

1932 December 2: Hindenburg appoints “social general” Schleicher Chancellor. Schleicher tries split left (trade-union bureaucrats break with the SPD) and right (dissident “left Nazis” under Gregor Strasser break with Hitler).

1933 January 30: Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor. Papen is Vice-Chancellor. Hitler agrees to take only three of 11 cabinet posts. Trotsky expects worker parties will resist Hitler and mobilize. SPD leaders say “Hitler’s appointment” is constitutional and forbid worker actions that might upset the Nazis. The KPD, on the other hand, is still denouncing the SPD.

1933 March 5: Hitler gets Hindenburg to dissolve parliament. In the run-up to new election, KPD meetings are banned. KDP press are shut down. Nazis finally take control of Prussia and its nationwide police force and flooded it with storm troopers. The terror begins.

1933 February 27: Nazis start fire in the Reichstag and blame it on Communists.

1933 February 28: President Hindenburg suspends Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, press, assembly, association. Thousands of KPD and SPD officials are arrested. Only the Nazis and Nationalists are permitted to campaign in the last week before the election.

1933 March 5: Reichstag elections. Even with all this “constitutional” oppression, the Nazis still couldn’t get a majority. But it was still game over. KPD calls for national strikes.

1933 March 23: Citing the Constitution, Hitler asks new Reichstag to grant him dictatorial power. This requires a two-thirds Reichstag vote. As KPD deputies are jailed or leaving the country, Hitler’s demand is granted (441 to 84). Liberal and conservative parties vote for it. Only the remaing Social Democrats vote against it.

1933 April 1: Stalinists Comintern deludes itself about an expected proletarian revolution soon to follow Hitler’s victory. While it dreams, the KPD is annihilated.

1933 May 1: May Day. The remaining SPD is a different beast than Frederick Engels had known. This creature supports Hitler’s various labor “reorganizations” and encourages workers to march in the Nazi “National Day of Labor” parade May 1.

1933 May 2: Nazis take over the trade-union movement and send labor leaders to concentration camps.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Sunday, August 30, 2026

3713. A Contribution to the Discussion of the Guardian's "Open Letter" on Iran

By Kamran Nayeri, August 30, 2026

Protest on the 40th day since the death of Mahsa/Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian who died after being arrested by the morality police in Tehran on September 22, 2022. 

On August 20, The Guardian published an Open Letter, “To Iran’s political prisoners, trapped ‘between two blades of a scissors’”, by 23 prominent leftists mostly from the United States and Western Europe: “We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions.”

The authors go further:

“And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.

“On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution.

“On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against.” (my emphases).

The Open Letter has ignited a much-needed public discussion.

This essay contributes to this discussion by examining aspects of the twin problems of how to defend Iran against imperialist and Zionist aggression while fighting for the release of political prisoners in Iran.  

As an Iranian American socialist since 1971 who participated in organized Iranian socialist movement (1975-1982) and organized socialist movements in the U.S. since 1982, I have firsthand experience in defense of Iranian political prisoners as well as participating as a leader of the Iranian Trotskyist movement and a co-founder of the Workers Unity Party in the Iranian revolution (1979-82) with the goal of helping the Iranian working people to form their own government based on their own grassroots organizations, in particular the workers and peasants shora (council) movements.

To proceed, I'll cite some notable earlier contributions focusing on the “scissors” analogy that frames the Open Letter.

Vijay Prashad, the executive director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, in “Against the False Symmetry of the Scissors: An Open Letter While Iran Resists an Illegal War of Aggression,” criticizes the “scissors” analogy:

“The central image, two blades of a scissors, is evocative but erroneous. It suggests that one of the blades is the Islamic Republic and the other blade is the United States and Israel, with the Iranian people being cut by the two of them. The error of the scissors is not merely that its blades are unequal. It is that the image makes the aggressor and the attacked appear as parallel sources of the same danger, stripping away the history and hierarchy that connect them. US imperialism is not simply one oppression alongside another. It is the force that has encircled Iran, devastated the region, armed Israel, imposed sanctions upon an entire population, and now brought war to Iranian territory. Your letter places the aggression and its target in the same moral frame.” (emphasis added)

Thus, the political framework Prashad uses is what was called Third Worldism in the 1960s and later “anti-imperialism,” which frames the main problem Iranian working people face as imperialism rather than the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic. Indeed, he considers the Islamic Republic regime (which he identifies with Iran as the country) to be an anti-imperialist force facing off against United States imperialism and Israeli Zionism. Thus, he praises the Islamic Republic policy of forming what they call the Axis of Resistance.

Farah Mokhtareizadeh, in “Who Names the World? Anti-Imperialism and Iran's Political Prisoners,” correctly points out:

“Prashad’s argument becomes more difficult when he moves from geopolitical asymmetry to political timing. There is a time to make demands and a time to act in solidarity, he suggests, implying that certain demands upon the Iranian state should recede while imperial war continues. The difficulty is that prisoners live both dangers in the same present tense. An execution sentence does not pause for war, and a prison door does not unlock because the state holding the key confronts a greater external power. The question becomes not whether Iranian repression exists but whether Iranians must postpone naming or resisting that repression until some safer political moment arrives.”

She notes that the scissors analogy was used by Keyvan Mohtadi, a labor activist and former political prisoner, on June 24, 2025, the day after Israeli bombing of Evin Prison, about the political prisoners held inside, including his wife, the labor organizer Anisha Asadollahi.

Thus, Mokhtareizadeh shows how opposition to imperialist and Zionist war and freedom of political prisoners are intertwined and reinforcing. 

The false scissors analogy

At the same time, Mokhtareizadeh’s example shows that the scissors analogy betrays political confusion among a considerable section of the left regarding Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-installed dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  There can be no doubt that the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic and imperialism oppress the Iranian working people. However, were they not oppressed by Mohammad Reza Shah’s dictatorial regime and imperialism before the 1979 Iranian revolution?  Of course they were, as the 1979 revolution was anti-dictatorial and anti-imperialist. The scissors analogy refers to the fact that the 1979 revolution overthrew the U.S.-installed regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and because of the weakness of the working class and socialist movements, put the power in the hands of ayatollah Khomeini, who proceeded to create the Islamic Republic, which is independent of imperialism, by crushing grassroots movements of the working people unleashed by that revolution.

The 1979 Iranian revolution threatened the dominance of imperialism, Zionism, and reactionary Arab regimes in the Middle East. Contrary to the dominant view propagated by both the Islamic Republic and imperialism, the 1979 revolution was not an Islamic Revolution. It was an anti-dictatorial, anti-imperialist, national democratic revolution aspiring to democracy, freedom, and social justice.

However, the Iranian people who lived under dictatorship had no chance to discuss what kind of society, economy, or state they wished to create after they overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty.  The labor movement, especially oil workers, played a significant role in the revolution, but it was politically unprepared to lead the revolution. The left was largely influenced by Stalinism, the ideology that envisioned a national democratic movement led by an anti-imperialist leader. The Tudeh Party held the totalitarian Soviet Union as the Actually Existing Socialism, and pro-China Stalinists (Maoists) held a similar view of the revolution. What is more, Stalinism of the Iranian socialist currents trained them as an undemocratic force. Here is an example: right after the victorious insurrection of February 9-12, two groups of Iranian Trotskyists merged in the Socialist Workers Party.  They planned to hold their first public meeting at Tehran Polytechnic (now Amir Kabir University) in central Tehran. A group of Maoists, Communist Union اتحادیه کمونیست ها), physically attacked and disrupted the meeting. The reason was Stalinism. Both Moscow and Beijing continued Stalin’s campaign against Trotsky and Trotskyism until the Soviet Union collapsed and China became the world's leading capitalist power! Meanwhile, Iranian labor and socialist movements never made defending democratic and political rights their central concern. Thus, when Khomeini declared mandatory Islamic dress for women who were government employees, the protest in Tehran included a rally in front of Tehran University and a march to Azadi Square, which was attacked by semi-fascist Islamic gangs and drew only 20,000 mostly younger women (at the time, Tehran had 3 million people). The labor movement and many leftist groups did not mobilize to participate in or defend it.

Political Islam and the Axis of Resistance

Thus, the power people took by months of mass struggle and three days of armed insurrection across the country was handed over to Ayatollah Khomeini, who began to institutionalize the theocratic capitalist Islamic Republic. In the early 1970s, while in exile in Iraq, Khomeini wrote a pamphlet titled Velayat-e Faghih (the rule of Islamic Jurists). He argued that Muslims everywhere are ruled by non-Muslims and demanded the formation of an Islamic government ruled by Islamic Jurists. The 1979 revolution gave Khomeini that opportunity to establish it in Iran, which he was able to do by deceit and by bloody repression.

Of course, consolidating the Islamic Republic required destroying grassroots movements of working people, including the workers’ shora (council) movement resulting from the 1979 revolution, suppression of oppressed nationalities, systematic oppression of women, as well as any independent political party. Thus, the 1979 Iranian revolution was destroyed through bloody repression by the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic, not by imperialism! (Nayeri, 2025, Chapter One, Chapter Two, pp. 51-56).

However, Khomeini’s vision required expanding the Islamic Republic's power among Shiites in the Middle East. This led to the formation of the Axis of Resistance. This created a new form of confrontation with imperialism and Zionism over their domination of the Middle East and their decades-long struggle to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Prashad mistakes this trajectory for anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism.

Rejecting Dependency School politics

By now it must be clear that how to stop imperialist and Zionist attacks on Iran and at the same time fight for Iranian people’s political rights, especially through building a movement to free all political prisoners, requires theoretical certifications. The “anti-imperialist” framework reflects the dominance of Dependency School (DS) in the 1950s and 1960s, which waned in the 1970s.

In the post-World War II period, anticolonial revolution swept much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It raised questions about their development. The Dependency School (DS) refers to a group of different theories that shared the idea that the backwardness of the periphery of world capitalism was due to imperialism. Thus, those who subscribed to DS theories framed their political theories on “anti-imperialism.” At the same time, Latin American nationalist economists formulated the initial DS theories (Nayeri, 2023B, Chapter 3), two prominent socialist dependency theories emerged: Paul Baran's Political Economy of Growth (1957; for a critique see Nayeri, 2023B, Chapter pp. 82-118) and Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (1972, for a critique see Nayeri 2023B, Chapter 4).

However, DS theories did not jive with Marx's historical materialism, which focuses on modes of production and relations of production to understand society and history. Instead, both Baran and Emanuel focus on imperialism as an external force and the sphere of circulation to explain the periphery's economic backwardness.

By the late 1970s, the DS school began to decline as countries in the periphery of capitalism industrialized, beginning with South Korea and, by the new century, China, which is now outcompeting the United States as the leading world capitalist economy.

Thus, Parshad’s outdated, mistaken DS framework leads him to support the expansionist policies of the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic in the name of “anti-imperialism.”

From Marx’s point of view, capital is self-expanding value. Thus, capital will outgrow its geographical location, and each capitalist state would protect its capitalist interests outside its borders. That is sufficient to explain the economic basis of wars, including World War I and World War II.  In fact, Hilferding’s claim in Finance Capital (1910) that an era of finance capital (later called monopoly capital) and Marx’s labor theory of value, his theory of how the capitalist mode of production functions, is obsolete was based on his mistaking Marx’s theory of competition as being similar to the neoclassical theory of Perfect Competition (Nayeri, 2023B, pp. 11-45). Thus, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), based largely on Hilferding’s work, is also mistaken. At any rate, in the same work Lenin identifies imperialism with the export of capital from advanced capitalist states to the periphery and views this as developing the forces of production there.  Thus, DS socialists have been wrong both in constructing their theories and in claiming they are Marxist.

Questions of program, strategy, and tactics

Still, many socialists would agree that the defense of the political prisoners in Iran must be put in the context of U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism to attack Iran.  This does not mean that defending democracy and freedom of political expression is subordinate to requirements of fighting imperialism and Zionism. In fact, I would argue in a moment that the two are intertwined and complementary. That is, the Islamic Republic has for almost half a century undermined effective struggle against imperialism and Zionism by attacking individual, democratic and political rights in Iran.

The authors of the Open Letter write: “The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the US and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.” This formulation in the Open Letter leaves out the “regime change” agenda of imperialism and Zionism untouched. Not only was regime change the stated goal of the U.S./Israeli war against Iran, but it is the active foreign policy of the Trump administration, as we saw in Venezuela and now see in Cuba. What Trump was able to achieve in Venezuela was what has been called “the shortest war in history”: Nicolas Maudura and his wife were abducted, and Delcy Rodríguez, his vice president, agreed to govern in accordance with Marco Rubio's instructions in Venezuela (Pager and Kurmanaev, July 11, 2026). Neither should we stand quiet when the U.S. and Israelis assassinate leaders of the Islamic

Republic.

The public and the left in the West have failed to actively oppose Israeli genocide in Gaza backed by the U.S. and European imperialist powers! Why would it be any different in the case of sanctions and war against Iran that have been unfolding since the 1979 revolution?

The key question the Open Letter raises is how can a massive enough anti-war movement be built to stop the U.S./Israeli war against Iran?  At the same time, how can an effective movement be built to stay the hands of the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic?

The answer to the first question depends on mass radicalization among working people and youth. No sign of it on the horizon, although nobody really knows how and when such radicalizations unfold.

The answer to the second question largely depends on the working people and socialist currents in Iran for the simple reason that the Islamic Republic continues to enjoy a mass base in Iran that has gone along with its repressive policies.

To overcome this obstacle, a principled anti-imperialist vision to uphold the sovereignty of the Iranian people is the necessary framework for advancing the goals of enhancing political space in Iran and freedom of political prisoners.  

Building a movement of the working people in Iran to challenge the Islamic Republic

The great masses who made the Iranian revolution of 1979 aspired to democracy, freedom, independence, and social justice. Ayatollah Khomeini destroyed grassroots movements that aspired to this vision to install the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic. We need to take up those aspirations and develop them to address the needs of Iran and the world in the twenty-first century.

Earlier I argued that the Islamic Republic is NOT anti-imperialist, that it opposes U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism from the narrow vision of Islamic fundamentalism.

As socialists, we need to oppose imperialism and Zionism because they are manifestations of capital as self-expanding value, thus, the capitalist mode of production, mixed with ideologically backward colonial notions. The United States imperialism is the expression of Manifest Destiny, and Zionism is the colonial-settler ideology of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Thus, to defend the sovereignty of the Iranian working people, socialists in Iran must oppose the U.S./Israeli war with a program of action of their own in sharp contrast to the current policies of the Islamic Republic. I would propose the following for discussion among Iranian working people.  A key lesson of the 1979 revolution was that people were united on what/who they did not want but not on what kind of society and economy they wanted and how it would be run.  

I propose the following as a conversation starter.

  • ·       Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of religion, especially for the oppressed nationalities, women, and defenders of nature. End all forms of oppression of women; for empowerment of women in all levels of society and the state. For individual freedom. For culture and art for everyone. 
  • ·       Freedom for working people to establish their own organizations, such as unions and shoras.  Jobs for all.  For minimum wages and salaries tied to inflation; for an affordable life consistent with human development for all. For an end to child labor. Free quality public education for all. 
  • ·       Freedom of all political prisoners. End all forms of torture and capital punishment now!
  • ·       No arbitrary arrests, presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a jury of one’s peers, and the right to due process. Dissolve the Islamic courts.
  •       Separation of religion and state; the right of the people to vote and to elect the representatives of their choice.
  • ·       The right to form committees of people's representatives that would be responsible to the people themselves and not to the state.
  • ·       The right to arm the people and organize a people's militia; dissolve all repressive armed forces of the Islamic Republic.
  • ·       The right of the mass organizations of the people to administer all the affairs of the towns and provinces.
  • ·       The right to liberation and voluntary cooperation of all the peoples and nationalities living in Iran. The right of self-determination of oppressed nationalities.
  • ·       The right of Iran to political and economic independence from imperialism.
  • ·       For workers’ control and management of all state industries and all enterprises that refuse to serve the interests of their workers and the working people in general.
  • ·       For a constituent assembly organized by the movements of working people to draft a new constitution. For a workers’ state. 
  •         For solidarity with oppressed people and nations; for a democratic secular Palestine where Palestinians and Jews and others live together as equals.  
  • ·       For the right to clean air and water. For the rights of nature to prosper without human exploitation. For an economy and society free of nuclear hazard and fossil fuels. For a green economy.  For a society at peace with itself and at peace with nature

The future Iranian revolution needs to be an ecological socialist revolution because of the existential world ecological crises: catastrophic global warming and climate change, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and nuclear holocaust. I propose Ecocentric Socialism as a vision to aspire to (Nayeri, 2023A, especially Chapter 19).

Building a movement to free all political prisoners in Iran

My experience in a successful campaign to free political prisoners in Iran dates to the 1970s, as in the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran (CAIFI). Formed in New York in 1973 to defend Reza Baraheni, the well-known Iranian author, poet, and literary critic of Azeri origin, and a founder of the Writers Association of Iran, who was arrested, tortured, and held in prison. CAIFI challenged the ultra-left sectarian view of the Confederation of Iranian Students (dominated by Maoists and nationalists), who did not believe political prisoners could be freed through mass work, and in some cases they did not even consider defending political prisoners they did not hold to be “revolutionaries.” CAIFI, by contrast, believed in defending all political prisoners regardless of ideology, selecting a few prominent political prisoners to draw public attention to the plight of all political prisoners and building the broadest possible coalition through democratic organizational methods. CAIFI won over the support of some prominent liberal and leftist Americans, including Kay Boyle, Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and Angela Davis, a former political prisoner and signer of the Open Letter, who supported CAIFI.  CAIFI gained momentum when, under international pressure, Baraheni was released, traveled to the U.S., and agreed to be a keynote speaker at CAIFI-sponsored events, attracting even more support for its campaigns.  In just a few years, CAIFI became the most successful defender of the Shah's political prisoners.  CAIFI's mission was finally accomplished when the February 1979 revolution freed all the Shah's political prisoners.

CAIFI was formed in the United States, the main supporter of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's dictatorship, where public opinion mattered. The Islamic Republic’s mass base is inside Iran. Thus, it is necessary to build a defense committee inside Iran, building on CAIFI and other successful defense efforts.

References:

Nayeri, Kamran. Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism. 2023. 

___________. Toward a Theory of Uneven and Combined Late Capitalist Development. 2023.

___________. Between Dreams and Reality: Essays on Revolution and Socialism. 2025.

Pager, Tyler and Anatoly Kurmanaev. “How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar.” The New York Times, July 11, 2026.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

3712. Díaz-Canel Met with Representatives of the Cuban Private Sector

By Leticia Martínez Hernández, Granma, August 25, 2026

Some Cuban entrepreneurs at a meeting in Miami, Florida, in February 2024. John McIntire, Cuba Emprende Foundation; Alain Garofalo, GSI Software Inc; Nora Gamez Torres, Miami Herald; Marta Deus, Mandao; Aldo Alvarez, Mercatoria in Miami, Florida in February 2024. 

The Head of State advocated for increasing the country's production of food, goods and services; for reducing unproductive costs and dependence on imports of finished products; and for incorporating technology, knowledge and innovation.

The president argued that it makes no sense to consider all economic actors in our economic and social model if they are not aligned with territorial and local development strategies and the National Development Plan.

"If the country wants to boost the energy sector, what is the role of the state-owned company in the energy sector? What is the role of the private company in the energy sector?" And that, he specified, must also be reflected in the numbers: how much did you contribute to the energy sector, to job creation, to national revenue, how much did you contribute to electricity generation? he noted.

At the same time, Díaz-Canel was critical of issues such as illicit profits. He emphasized that profit must be linked to effort, results, productivity, efficiency, innovation, and the risks taken, not to speculation or price gouging that harms our people.

This sector, he urged, cannot become a space for illegalities, tax evasion, speculation, corruption, hoarding, and price-setting disconnected from reality.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Saturday, August 29, 2026

3711. A Brief Biography of Leon Trotsky

 



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Monday, August 24, 2026

3710. Phoenix, America’s Desert Metropolis, Is on the Short List to Lose Water

By Reis Thebault, The New York Times, August 23, 2026


Luxury homes with swimming pools in Phoenix

From a secure, windowless room in northern Phoenix, technicians control the Colorado River water that sustains America’s largest desert metropolis.

The vast canal system the team oversees has for four decades conveyed an increasingly scarce commodity across 330 miles of rugged terrain to slake blossoming subdivisions, sprawling farmland and, in recent years, a powerhouse semiconductor industry. It supercharged Arizona’s economy and transformed Phoenix into one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.

But this lifeline, known as the Central Arizona Project, came with a catch. In exchange for billions of federal dollars to build it, the state agreed to lower-priority water rights, putting the aqueduct among the first in line for cuts in a time of deep drought.


Now that time has come.

“It was the price we had to pay,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a former water director for the city of Phoenix. “The chickens have come home to roost.”


With the seven states that rely on the Colorado River deadlocked over how to split its diminishing supply, the Trump administration is pushing its own plan to divide the water. The three downriver states — Arizona, California and Nevada — would most likely shoulder the most pain, but no single user stands to lose more than the Central Arizona Project.

Short-term reductions, announced by the federal government on Friday, will cost Arizona roughly one-third of its share of river water over the next two years. But beyond that, a range of cutbacks remain possible.

Under the most severe outcome, the system would be cut off entirely during the driest years, setting off a social and economic meltdown Arizonans shudder to even imagine.

“They are threatening to shut down the Southwest,” said Brenda Burman, the project’s general manager. “It’s not possible to picture it.”


Water is gold in the western United States, and people have been fighting over every drop for generations. The Colorado, a river that supports 40 million residents and is buckling after decades of drought and overuse, is the fiercest battleground of all. Access to it is governed by an arcane legal system that prioritizes the oldest established users.

The earliest laws were written for a river that no longer exists, and states do not agree on how to proceed. The high-stakes talks have gained urgency as the water levels of the river’s largest two reservoirs, Lakes Mead and Powell, have dwindled in recent weeks to record lows.

Arizona officials say any proposal that cuts off the state’s canal system is unacceptable, and they have threatened to sue, initiating court battles that could go on for years. For now, water experts say, taps and sprinklers will continue running from Phoenix to Tucson.


But any serious hit to the state’s Colorado River supply is likely to drive up the cost of replacement water and lead to more groundwater pumping, jeopardizing an already depleted safety net for future generations.


Human life in the parched Southwest has always depended on harnessing water.

The prehistoric Hohokam people built a flourishing society in the Sonoran Desert by carving a network of irrigation canals. Hundreds of years after the mysterious disappearance of the canals, the Bureau of Reclamation in 1911 dedicated its first major dam outside Phoenix to bring more settlers to the valley.

But state leaders knew they would need another source of water to continue growing, and they had their eyes on the Colorado River.

“The Central Arizona Project was Arizona’s holy grail,” said Thomas E. Sheridan, a historian who has written extensively about the system’s origins.

After decades of bitter interstate disputes, Congress approved construction of the aqueduct in 1968. The project would suck water from the Colorado and transport it to faraway cities, tribes and farms — an engineering marvel and a testament to the country’s belief that it could bend nature to its will.

But California cajoled Arizona into a compromise. Even during times of shortage, the Golden State would get its full allocation of water, no matter what.

When the project made its first deliveries to Phoenix in 1985, the celebration was tempered by foreboding: “The time is going to come in the not too distant future when we are going to be looking for water again,” a congressman cautioned at the time.

Cities that count on the Central Arizona Project have tried to prepare. The region now uses less water than it did 40 years ago, even as its population has more than doubled, and it has frantically recharged its aquifers.

Most Arizona officials do not expect the federal government to approve more massive water infrastructure projects, but they insist Congress should help pay for smaller-scale solutions like desalination plants or dam expansions.

In Phoenix, which gets about 40 percent of its water from the canal, Mayor Kate Gallego said the federal government should kick in more for multibillion dollar purification plants that will turn wastewater into drinking water. She compared such funding with aid that helps coastal states rebuild after hurricanes — a national response to a different type of disaster.

“Given the magnitudes of these cuts, we would like them to step up in a really big and meaningful way,” Ms. Gallego said.

Cave Creek, a picturesque burg steeped in cowboy kitsch in the foothills north of Phoenix, gets 95 percent of its water from the aqueduct system.


“Without Colorado River water, we would be a dusty little town with dirt roads,” Mayor Robert Morris said.

The town’s leaders have been scrambling to find backup plans. Cave Creek has hired a water consultant and struck deals with neighboring municipalities, cobbling together enough supply for the next five years, Mr. Morris said.

He has sought to prepare residents for higher bills and stricter conservation, working to undo a foundational part of the state’s philosophy in the process.

“The biggest thing for people to overcome is the idea of unlimited, cheap water,” Mr. Morris said.


In 2022, the canal project cut off most of its deliveries to the region’s nontribal agricultural fields, which have lower priority rights than cities. Those reductions would continue under the proposed federal framework.



Human life in the parched Southwest has always depended on harnessing water.The prehistoric Hohokam people built a flourishing society in the Sonoran Desert by carving a network of irrigation canals. Hundreds of years after the mysterious disappearance of the canals, the Bureau of Reclamation in 1911 dedicated its first major dam outside Phoenix to bring more settlers to the valley.


But state leaders knew they would need another source of water to continue growing, and they had their eyes on the Colorado River.


“The Central Arizona Project was Arizona’s holy grail,” said Thomas E. Sheridan, a historian who has written extensively about the system’s origins.


Even tribes, which hold the most senior water rights in the state, are concerned about the federal government’s doomsday situation. Members of the Ak-Chin Indian Community, who use Colorado River water to grow barley, potatoes and corn on 16,000 acres south of Phoenix, are not sure how that water would be delivered if the Central Arizona Project lost its entire allotment.


The uncertainty has reopened old wounds. In the 1970s, after failing to prevent nontribal farmers from draining an aquifer below the Ak-Chin reservation, Congress passed a law to ensure the tribe would always have an alternative source.


“It’s deeply concerning if this promise to us will once again be broken,” said Gabriel Lopez, the tribe’s chairman.


The tribe, whose name refers to traditional irrigation methods, has tried to conserve, Mr. Lopez added, and its farms now mostly use more efficient sprinkler systems.


“We always say ‘water is life,’ and that can’t be more true than it is today,” he said.


“We always say ‘water is life,’ and that can’t be more true than it is today,” he said.

“These are draconian outcomes for Arizona,” he said in an interview.

At the Central Arizona Project’s headquarters, water dispatchers, who pull marathon shifts in the command center, are preparing to work with channels that are less full.

As the air conditioning hummed and a map displayed live readings of water flows across central Arizona on a recent morning, the technicians could feel the weight of their responsibility.

“We can’t afford to be making mistakes,” said Andrew Tatlow, a water control supervisor. “Every drop of water counts.”

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)