The Iranian and Afghan revolutions of 1978-79 decisively ended the Left’s revolutionary decades

Evidence

1978-79, in Iran and Afghanistan, then made the shift unmistakable. The K_homeiniite takeover in Iran was one of those rare conjunctures in which the revolution and the counter-revolution were condensed in the same moment. In Afghanistan, the last country to have a revolution under a communist leadership, hisrory now repeated itself, in Marx’s famous phrase, both as tragedy and as farce. If the Iranian Revolution had signalled the decisive de”reat of the Left in the Middle East and the rise to ideological hegemony of Islamic fundamentalism in that whole region, the hisrory-asrragedy-and-as-farce in Afghanistan was to contribute considerably to the collapse of what socialism there had ever been in the Comecon countries, helping ro pave the way for perestroika first in the Soviet Union, then on a global scale. The savage destruction of Baghdad in 1991, the worst since the Mongols sacked that city in the thirteenth century, was the gift of this global perestroika making one recall Marx once more. As he famously pur it in his correspondence on the Gotha Programme: capitalism does not lead necessarily to socialism, it may lead just as inexorably towards barbarism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 787

Categorization

• QUESTION: The passage has OCR corruption (‘pur it’), but the substantive claim about Marx’s Gotha Programme being invoked as prophecy of barbarism rather than socialism is worth verifying against the original text.
• XREF: connects to: Iran’s 1979 revolution condensed revolution and counter-revolution in one moment — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 354; The 1979 Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan triggered the Middle East buildup; Global anti-capitalist revolution retreated by the mid-1970s — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 271 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Global anti-capitalist revolution retreated by the mid-1970s #corroborates (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 271
• Iran’s 1979 revolution condensed revolution and counter-revolution in one moment #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 354
• The 1979 Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan triggered the Middle East buildup #expands (0.80)
• The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a global wave of revolution #qualifies (0.80)