Opportunist Reasoning and the Politics of Fear

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By Shadab Murtaza

It is often assumed that the collapse of clerical authoritarianism in Iran would inevitably result in the establishment of a government subordinate to the United States. This assumption overlooks a fundamental historical reality. In the 1979 revolution, the Iranian people dismantled not only the rule of the Pahlavi monarchy but also the system of domination through which US imperialism exercised decisive influence over Iranian political life. At the same time, history also demonstrates that the removal of imperialist domination and its local agents does not, by itself, bring an end to exploitation. The fall of the Pahlavi monarchy did not usher in emancipation for the Iranian people; it merely replaced one form of authoritarian rule with another. The clerical state that emerged under Khomeini, despite its persistent claims of anti-imperialism, has continued to subject Iranian society to systematic repression and class exploitation.

It therefore does not follow that the overthrow of the Velayat-e-Faqih system would automatically serve the interests of US-led “regime change,” nor does the regime’s oppositional stance toward imperialism imply that it has protected the population from oppression. While it is certainly possible that the collapse of the current Iranian state could create conditions favorable to imperialist intervention, reducing the meaning and future of popular struggle to this single possibility reflects a narrow and defeatist political outlook. More importantly, such reasoning objectively functions as a form of political exoneration for the existing clerical and bourgeois state, carried out in the name of anti-imperialism.

The invocation of external threats in order to neutralize internal dissent is a familiar strategy of ruling elites within bourgeois states. By presenting popular resistance as the product of foreign conspiracy, internal exploitation is rendered invisible and opposition is morally delegitimized. This pattern is repeatedly observable in Pakistan and in many other countries, where movements for democratic and social rights are suppressed under the pretext of national security. Yet when geopolitical tensions escalate, the same ruling classes appeal to the very populations they repress, calling for unity and sacrifice in the name of patriotism and national defense. The contradiction is rarely acknowledged, but it is fundamental to the functioning of bourgeois power.

Marxist theory addresses this contradiction directly by rejecting the notion that the working masses possess a homeland in the political sense claimed by ruling elites. Across societies, workers experience their nation primarily as a structure of domination through which their own ruling classes extract labor and discipline dissent. For them, the promise of national belonging offers little beyond continued exploitation. Nonetheless, both right-wing and certain self-identified left-wing currents insist that workers must subordinate their interests to those of the nation, aligning themselves with ruling elites against external enemies. They argue that failure to do so risks the loss of social freedoms and economic stability.

This claim warrants scrutiny. The working population in bourgeois states already experiences systematic deprivation, precarity, and repression. It is therefore reasonable to ask whether the threat of foreign domination represents a qualitatively new danger for those whose lives are already structured by exploitation. When workers are warned that refusal to defend the nation alongside their rulers will result in catastrophe, the implicit assumption is that their existing conditions are tolerable, or at least preferable. Yet for vast sections of the population, daily life under domestic exploitation already resembles the conditions they are told to fear.

The question, then, is not whether workers should choose between domestic and foreign domination, but why they are repeatedly presented with this false dichotomy. What is it that they are supposed to lose, other than the burden of exploitation imposed by their own elites? If one form of domination is replaced by another, the substance of their condition remains unchanged. The insistence that workers must therefore become political auxiliaries of their own ruling classes reveals the logic of opportunism rather than revolutionary analysis.

In reality, the fear of foreign domination does not primarily reflect the interests of the working class. It is rooted instead in the anxieties of the petty bourgeoisie, whose limited property binds it materially and ideologically to the larger structures of capitalist ownership. This shared concern for property preservation explains why appeals to patriotism and national security resonate most strongly among those who possess something tangible to lose. Both large and small property holders seek to mobilize workers as a defensive barrier against external threats, while preserving internal hierarchies intact.

This same logic appears in arguments concerning economic sanctions. It is frequently claimed that deteriorating living conditions in countries such as Iran and Venezuela are primarily the result of imperialist sanctions, and that ruling governments would otherwise pursue policies favorable to their populations. From a Marxist–Leninist perspective, this framing obscures the central issue. The decisive question is not the existence of sanctions, but the social distribution of their effects. In bourgeois states, sanctions are used as a justification for transferring the costs of crisis onto the working population, while insulating dominant classes from harm. In contrast, a genuinely socialist state would direct the burden of external pressure toward elite privilege and accumulated wealth.

Empirical patterns reinforce this distinction. In Pakistan, poverty has expanded significantly over the past decade, while real incomes among the lower half of households have declined. At the same time, income and wealth concentration among the upper strata has intensified. Inflation has eroded the purchasing power of wages, yet the consumption patterns and privileges of economic and bureaucratic elites remain largely undisturbed. This is not an accidental outcome of crisis, but its class-managed distribution.

Iran presents an even clearer illustration. During periods of heightened sanctions, inflation surged, the currency depreciated sharply, and access to basic necessities deteriorated for much of the population. Yet income concentration among the upper strata persisted, and networks connected to state institutions and commercial monopolies transformed scarcity into opportunity through speculation and market control. If the clerical state were genuinely oriented toward popular welfare, such conditions would have prompted a systematic assault on elite privilege. Instead, the burden of adjustment was imposed almost entirely on workers.

Venezuela demonstrates a similar dynamic. Despite severe economic contraction and widespread impoverishment, sections of the political elite and an emerging bourgeois layer linked to oil revenues preserved or improved their material position through dollarization, monopolized imports, and informal accumulation networks. Extreme inequality remained intact, contradicting the claim that sanctions alone account for social deterioration.

To attribute popular suffering exclusively to imperialist sanctions is therefore to misidentify cause and responsibility. Sanctions do not automatically devastate societies; rather, they reveal the class character of the state and the priorities of those who govern it. A bourgeois state exploits crisis to deepen class hierarchies, whereas a workers’ state would confront crisis by dismantling them.

Underlying much of the confusion surrounding these issues is the assumption that workers must choose between aligning with domestic elites or submitting to imperialist domination. This assumption reflects a loss of confidence in the independent political capacity of the working class. Marxism–Leninism rejects this false choice. It affirms that workers are capable of opposing both domestic exploitation and external domination simultaneously.

The belief that popular forces are too weak to challenge internal power structures, yet strong enough to resist imperialism on behalf of those same structures, is internally contradictory. It serves primarily to justify political inaction and to redirect popular energy away from autonomous struggle. By invoking fear of external enemies, workers are encouraged to abandon their own interests in favor of preserving an exploitative order.

Such reasoning ultimately reduces the masses to passive instruments—useful either in defense of domestic elites or in service of foreign interests, but never as agents of historical transformation. This outlook stands in direct opposition to Marxist–Leninist theory, which locates the driving force of social change in the conscious, independent struggle of the working class itself.

The task of revolutionary politics, therefore, is not to manage fear or to arbitrate between competing forms of domination. It is to cultivate the conditions under which working people can recognize their collective power and organize an autonomous struggle directed against all structures of exploitation—internal and external alike. Only through such a perspective can the cycle of opportunism, dependency, and defeat be broken.

Shadab Murtaza is a Communist political activist of Marxist-Leninist tradition living in Pakistan. He has been a member of the Communist Party of Pakistan and Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (Workers-Peasants Party). He writes on issues and questions related to national and international Communist politics.