#al-e ahmad

[post-makhno]

Although Al-e Ahmad’s distinction between East and West is rooted in political economy, his project is ultimately an exercise in the critique of ideology. By consuming Western products, Iranians are participating in a system that leads to both economic dependence and cultural dissolution. In consuming commodities, the Iranian bourgeoisie fails to recognize the underlying social relations of production that such consumption is reinforcing. In other words, westoxification is a form of commodity fetishism, but its effects are amplified by the geography of uneven development. For Marx, the commodity form disguised the way that surplus value was created though the expropriation of workers’ labor time; for Al-e Ahmad, the commodity now justifies the neoimperial relationship between countries. Western nations benefit both by acquiring raw materials (oil, for example) at advantageous prices and by creating a market for surplus goods.

Margaret Kohn, Political Theories of Decolonization p. 42

[theangryminority]

The machine should naturally serve us as a trampoline, so that we may stand on it and jump all the farther by its rebound. One must have the machine, one must build it. But one must not remain in bondage to it; one must not fall into its snare. The machine is a means, not an end. The end is to abolish poverty and to put material and spiritual welfare within the reach of all. Conformity in the workplace leads to conformity in the party and the union, and this itself leads to conformity in the barracks; this is, for the machines of war.

Al-e Ahmad

[theangryminority]

Once you have given economic and political control of your country to foreign concerns they know what to sell you, or at least what not to sell you. Because they naturally seek to sell you their manufacturers in perpetuity, it is best that you remain forever in need of them, and God save the oil reserves. They take away the oil and give you whatever you want in return - from soup to nuts, even grain. This enforced trade even extends to cultural matters, to letters, to discourse.

Al-e Ahmad

[theangryminority]

Al-e Ahmad knew that this was an inversion of the problem. A Reformation does not lead to the Industrial Revolution - indeed, to see cultural and economic history in such a way is to miss the theft of the wealth of the Americas for the glory of Europe, and the development of European liberalism in relationship to the degradation of the rights of the people in the colonies. Along the grain of the ECLA view of underdevelopment, Al-e Ahmad described the world as being sundered between 'two poles or extremes....One pole is held by the sated - the wealthy, the powerful, the makers and exporters of manufacturers. The other pole is left to the hungry - the poor, the impotent, the importers and consumers. The beat of progress is in the ascending part of the world, and the pulse of stagnation is the moribund part of the world.

Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations

[theangryminority]

I am supposed to preserve my manners, culture, music, religion, and so forth untouched, like an unearthed relic, so that the gentlemen can find and excavate them, so they can display them in a museum and say, 'Yes, another example of primitive life.'

Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis

[shutdowninthedepthsilay-blo-blog]

Al-e Ahmad schooling fools on the importance of Nima Yushij. ("He's an engaged, political poet. But his poetry isn't sloganeering...")