In Spain you had overlapping interests across class and identity depending on groups personal reference point. Rural poor could support the nationalist because of conservative religious views, Urban wealthy supporting Republicans based on reformist views.

It also is clear that class consciousness (for better or worse) is mitigated by (non-economic forms of) identity. But there is, nevertheless, a class component to elections in these societies that all too often is deliberately downplayed by Western media outlets and analysts, a component that extends beyond the personal background of individual candidates. Thus, although I like Lew would reflexively opt for democracy over class, upon reflection I would have to consider whether the democracy in question is dominated by elite interests who control the media as well as government, thereby denying subordinate groups an authentic voice in determining their political representation (which is why I agree that parliamentary democracies are preferable over presidential democracies, and proportional representation systems preferable over first-past-the-post systems). Nevertheless, as Lenin noted, democracy is capitalism’s “best possible political shell.”

Due to word limits in a blog post I did not mention the role of Persian nationalism and the ethnogeography of the vote (particularly in rural areas, which, to partially answer Anita’s question is a mix of small and large landholders, tenant farmers, sharecroppers and market gardeners). Nor did I give time to Lebanese civil-military relations as a reflection of the ethno-political divisions within it. These and other factors clearly mattered, but my narrow focus in this post was to briefly highlight the class dimensions involved.

Iran’s revolution overthrew the Shah and his cronies but it didn’t move power out of the narrow, educated elite, it simply shifted power within it. Ahmadinjad is, as far as I know, the first ruler Iran has ever had who doesn’t originate from that class.

As such he gets enormous support from the rural class just for being one of them. This, ironically means he needs to do very little, and nothing substantial, to actually address their needs, since just by gabbing about his deprived childhood he can win their support very cheaply.

Any class-based analysis has to acknowledge that having working class origins =/= genuinely supporting the working class. I’m sure I don’t need to cite examples. Unfortunately, even those who are moving beyond the ‘fundamentalist vs democrats’ dimension of the Iranian situation don’t seem to have taken this onboard.

The problem with democracy in the Middle East is that it isn’t always what we’d call democracy in the West, and that’s (part of) what makes the question complex. Middle Eastern democracies, such as they are, tend to incorporate a great deal more local culture (including religious, ethnic and historical traditions) than democracies in other regions. I had prepared some generalised comparisons of the Lebanese and Iranian electoral systems here, but on reflection I don’t think I’m qualified to make them, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that I think that due to its greater transparency the Lebanese confessional system generally passes a Western liberal-democratic sniff-test of sorts, being considered democratic on balance, while Iran’s system doesn’t. So in the case of Iran at least, it could be argued there’s been the exchange of a poor and dysfunctional democratic system for a non-democratic system which has nevertheless come around to the “right answer” from a Marxist perspective.

Even having reflected on that, though, the answer for me is still that democracy is more important than class, even if it is an imperfect sort of democracy such as Iran’s. This should come as no great surprise to those who’ve been following my posts of late; orthodox Marxist-based analyses of class are usually a distant third for me behind traditions of liberal democracy (which I consider paramount) and dimensions of identity politics.

So, on balance, I side with the democracy fundamentalists and with Mousavi and those who wear the green wrist-bands. The core problems here are to do with apparent abuse of political process. It doesn’t matter to me that Ahmadinejad’s allegedly-working-class supporters have gotten their way; the fact that what limited democratic control Iran’s population has had over their government has been taken away from them trumps the outcome, and that ain’t the way forward.

Likewise in Honduras. Zelaya may have been agitating for change in an unconstitutional way, but to my mind a “technical” breach doesn’t merit military intervention absent some other real and immediate threat. Stability, or ideological motives disguised as putative majority interest, must not be allowed to take precedence over democratic integrity.

L

Re the current situation in Iran, it may be that the regime has announced the election result it wanted without reference to the actual votes, but that isn’t at all the same thing as saying Mousavi won. I’d lay money on the educated urban types backing Mousavi not having much idea of how the rural conservatives or urban proletariat voted. We’ll never know, I guess – the govt seems entirely happy to kill as many people as it takes to remain in power, so they’ll be writing the history of what happened.

The place of the rural land owning poor makes my head hurt in a class analysis. On the one hand they have and exploit capital, on the other subsistence agriculture doesn’t make a profit off their capital, doesn’t employ other labour, and often requires that the land owners work elsewhere in addition.

Can you enlighten me? Where does the rural land owning poor fit in a class analysis?

And in the particular case of Iran, where land reforms 40+ years ago redistributed land to the working class, how does one analyse that? To what extent is class cultural and able to persist beyond a change in circumstance, and to what extent is it simply a factor of what one owns and does and is therefore able to change for a single family over night?

Perhaps because I use identity lenses more heavily than class ones, I tend to aspects of identity in class – that they are about who you believe you are more than what you are/have. Perhaps I should get a slightly more rigourous class analysis :)

There has been an assumption thus far that Ahmadinejad does well among the poor and working classes, while Mousavi’s supporters are ‘middle class’. But one begins to see a problem with such terms as soon as you investigate what is meant by ‘middle class’. According to this analyst, 46% of the Iranian population is now middle class – but he defines “the middle class as being in a household with at least $10 per person per day expenditures (PPP dollars) and with at least a basic education (primary).” Now, if this reflects the common way in which the term is used, then marxists should be saying that what is actually happening is that large sectors of the working class backed the Mousavi camp. Indeed, we have already seen the most politicised and organised sectors in the trade union movement also back the protesters (they declined for obvious reasons to back any one candidate). So, at the very least, the lazy assumptions about the class basis of the vote and of the protests merit re-examination. In fact, the same analyst argues that a substantial layer of this supposed middle class vote comprises young unemployed people. If you’re unemployed, by my book, you probably shouldn’t be called ‘middle class’. As far as this layer goes, we’re talking about young, educated workers who are suffering in the economy and who lack the democratic right to do anything about their situation. They see no future from themselves in the current set-up. That is certainly a class grievance, but it can hardly be reduced to a petulant middle class cultural complaint – it’s not the Gucci crowd, because you can’t buy Guccis on $10 a day. While we appreciate the scepticism that some people entertain about these protests, and understand the reasons for this, the condescending claims and gratuitously nasty language about them does not bear examination. It actually redounds to the massive discredit of those using such rhetoric when the protesters are being murdered in the streets, with far less money and social power to their being than any of those who are deriding them as yuppies.

*Just think of Keith Locke and the Khmer Rouge fiasco, etc.

one further issue to the mix is that “democracy” that is being promoted is almost always in the “first past the post” format ie there is very little agitation for proportional representation, which i believe is a much better form of democracy. so another question is: if we choose democracy, then which particular form of democracy should we be choosing & which one would be most suitable for this particular country? as an example, i’ve read a suggestion (can’t remember where, sorry) that a move to democracy in saudi would best be achieved by first moving to a bicameral system similar to the house of lords thing as they had in britain.

anyway, lots of thorny issues & no easy answers!