Dialectics, Iran and the Long Durée of Anticolonial Revolution

The war on Iran is a class war against any country that refuses to open itself up for foreign profit. Understanding Iran means seeing its fight as part of the same struggle that defines the colonized world.

Originally published in Hood Communist.

Dialectical and historical materialism cannot be understated as critically important in understanding the “war on Iran”. The framework is indispensable for moving beyond the phenomena of geopolitics (sanctions, military posturing, diplomatic tensions) to grasp the essential phenomena: the structural contradictions of imperialism in its current, neocolonial phase. By examining the nation-state as an enclosure, the process of primitive accumulation, and the dialectic between the dictatorship of capital and the dictatorship of the proletariat, we can see the war on Iran not as a discrete conflict between nation-states, but as a critical battle in the ongoing class war that shapes the entire imperialist world-system. This perspective contextualizes Iran’s struggle within the broader anti-colonial and anti-imperialist project, drawing contrasts with the historical experience of post-colonial state-building and exploring the necessary conditions for forging alliances that point toward the dissolution of the current imperial order.

The dominant liberal narrative presents the conflict with Iran as a series of discrete phenomena: a dispute over a nuclear program, concerns about regional “destabilization,” or a clash between a revolutionary theocracy and the liberal international order. Experiencing these phenomena creates a fragmented, superficial understanding. A dialectical and historical materialist approach compels us to go beyond the surface. It demands we ask: what are the underlying social relations that produce these phenomena? What historical processes have led to this? And what are the internal contradictions driving this conflict toward resolution?

Historical materialism suggests that the ultimate cause of all social change and political conflict is to be found not in the ideas of men, nor in the actions of individual states, but in the development of the mode of production and the ensuing struggle between classes. Applying this to the war on Iran means recognizing that the conflict is not fundamentally about Tehran’s political system or its regional ambitions, but about Iran’s place within, and its challenge to, the global capitalist system. The war is a structural imperative of imperialism, a necessary response to a nation that, through its revolution, expropriated domestic capital and now seeks to develop outside the dictates of the international bourgeoisie.

The Nation-State as an Enclosure

To understand the terrain of this conflict, we must first grasp the nature of the nation-state under imperialism. The classical Marxist position, articulated by Vladimir Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, identified the nation-state as the primary political form through which finance capital organizes the global division of labor and exploits the periphery. However, the nation-state that emerged in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East after World War II was qualitatively different from the colonial administrative apparatus that preceded it. It was, in theory, a vehicle for national liberation.

Yet, as Kwame Nkrumah and other pan-Africanists theorized, political independence without economic liberation resulted in a neocolonial situation. The formal sovereignty of the nation-state masked a profound structural subordination. The enclosures that characterized primitive accumulation under classical colonialism were reconfigured. Instead of direct colonial administration, imperialism now operates through a complex architecture of control: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank impose structural adjustment programs; private multinational corporations own or manage key infrastructure like ports and extractive industries; and local comprador bourgeoisies serve as intermediaries for foreign capital in a system of neocolonialism.

In this framework, the nation-state itself becomes an enclosure. Its borders are not merely geographical lines but juridical (the use of lawfare) and economic mechanisms that contain and structure society for the benefit of external capital. The ownership of ports by private interests, the extraction of resources by foreign firms, and the forced displacement of populations for development projects or resource wars are all contemporary mechanisms of primitive accumulation. This is the perpetual process by which capital creates the conditions for its own expansion by separating people from the means of production and appropriating common wealth.

The condition of being “underdeveloped” is not a natural state of backwardness but a product of colonial and neocolonial extraction. The periphery is underdeveloped precisely because its surplus value has been systematically appropriated by imperialist centers. In Black Scare, Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism In The United States, Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly similarly argues that the peripheral position of predominantly Black nations and communities is actively produced by the appropriation of their labor, resources, and wealth by imperialist centers. Thus, underdevelopment is not a starting point but an outcome of systemic expropriation.

To break this cycle, a revolutionary state must perform a dual function. First, it must deploy its coercive and administrative apparatus to address the distribution question, ensuring that the society’s wealth is directed toward mass production, industrialization, and the material needs of the population rather than being siphoned off as profit for foreign capital. Second, it must actively dismantle the internal structures that perpetuate underdevelopment, namely the comprador bourgeoisie and the private sector’s control over the “commanding heights” of the economy.

Iran’s Rupture and the Imperialist Response

The war on Iran must be understood as a conflict over this enclosure. Iran, by virtue of its 1979 revolution, represents a rupture. It is a nation-state that has, to a significant degree, refused its role as an enclosure for foreign capital. The nationalization of the oil industry, the establishment of a state-directed economy, and the development of indigenous industrial and military capacity constitute a rejection of the neocolonial model. The primary contradiction, therefore, is not between Iran and the United States as nation-states, but between a project of post-colonial, anti-imperialist development and the imperialist system that requires all nation-states to be open enclaves for the extraction of surplus value.

By strangling the economy, creating scarcity, and applying pressure on the population’s living standards, Western imperialism aims to force a capitulation either through regime change or through a return to a neocolonial structure where foreign capital can once again dictate terms. The war on Iran, viewed materialistically, reveals itself as a class war. It is a conflict between the dictatorship of capital, organized globally through the U.S. state and its allies, and a state attempting to exercise a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, however imperfect and bureaucratically mediated.

This dialectic of the current siege is the external dictatorship of capital marshaling every instrument of financial strangulation, military intimidation, and ideological warfare against the internal, embattled structures of a state attempting to organize production for social necessity rather than private profit. The U.S. can simultaneously shutter Iranian energy exports while mobilizing its own liquefied natural gas (LNG) to supply Europe at exorbitant prices not because of any coherent geopolitical strategy, but because capitalism’s sole logic is the realization of profit through the circulation of value. The same system that starves one nation of fuel (Cuba) can profit from supplying another, and in that asymmetry lies the essence of imperialism: the capacity to orchestrate scarcity as a weapon while extracting surplus from the very conditions of deprivation it creates.

The siege, therefore, is not an aberration from the normal functioning of the international system but its most naked expression. Sanctions, military encirclement, and the deliberate impoverishment of a population are not punitive measures applied to a transgressor. They are the regular mechanisms through which capital disciplines any territory that threatens to escape its orbit, demonstrating to all peripheral and semi-peripheral nations the price of attempting to chart an autonomous path.

As Dr. Ali Kadri makes clear in his discussions of his book Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction, capitalism’s drive for primitive accumulation reaches its logical conclusion in death. The system must eliminate rivals (whether competing capitalist powers or, more fundamentally, competing modes of production that do not subordinate social life to the accumulation of value). It must extinguish alternative forms of social organization that demonstrate the possibility of a world beyond capital. And it must, when faced with organized resistance, resort to the physical annihilation of those who refuse to submit.

The Path Forward

The war on Iran, understood through this lens, is not a policy dispute to be managed but a battlefront in a protracted war against any nation or movement that seeks to break free from the enclosures that structure the neocolonial world-system. The revolutionary state that emerges from anti-colonial struggle thus becomes the target of a totalizing violence that recognizes no distinction between economic warfare, political subversion, and military aggression. To grasp this is to understand that the conflict will not be resolved through diplomacy within the existing order, because the existing order requires either the reintegration of Iran as a compliant enclosure for foreign capital or its destruction as a warning to all who would follow.

The path beyond this lies in the conscious organization of the international working class and oppressed nations in a unified front against the dictatorship of capital. The defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with all its complexities and contradictions, is inseparable from the struggle to dissolve the system of nation-states that capital has constructed as its primary political form.

Erica Caines is a writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. Caines is the National Co- Coordinator of The Black Alliance For Peace, co- editor of Hood Communist Blog, and founder of #LiberationThroughReading providing African children with books that represent them.e

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“Crime”, The Trojan Horse For Colonial Control

The concept of “crime” is not a fixed, objective reality but a fluid and politically potent construct which has been meticulously weaponized to serve the interests of power. Crime is in fact a dialectical product of the very systems of domination it purportedly challenges. An elusive chameleon, the shifting definitions of crime justify the expansion of state control, the suppression of dissent, and the advancement of imperial projects, both domestically and globally. Whether “high crime” or “low crime” , the rhetoric is rarely about public safety; rather, it is the primary language through which state agencies validate their own existence, and the imperialist state escalates its violence, masking the carceral and militaristic enforcement of social order to maintain hegemony under the guise of moral necessity. This manipulation reveals a continuum of control, where the domestic police state and global imperialism are not separate entities but interconnected systems using the same logic of criminalization to manage populations and resources.

Within the United States, the discourse on crime functions as the engine of domestic imperialism, particularly over the African/Black internal colony. The bipartisan commitment to “tough-on-crime” policies has systematically normalized the criminalization of poverty and Blackness, creating a populace conditioned to accept ever-more repressive measures. The tragedy is not just a figure like Donald Trump’s brazenness, but the Democratic Party’s decades-long failure to dismantle the very systems that enable it.

This foundation is starkly visible in the paradox of Baltimore. Under Mayor Brandon Scott’s “low crime” tour, the city is presented as a success story of managed violence. Yet, this “success” is predicated on the validation of a working police state: a city occupied via the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which militarizes local police with surplus military hardware; enmeshed in “deadly exchange” programs where US police train with Israeli occupation forces, exchanging tactics of occupation; targeted by federal initiatives like Operation Relentless Pursuit; and subjected to proposals for a “Cop City” and a billion-dollar jail. As Scott pronounces Baltimore as the latest Wakanda safe haven, Baltimore City Police murdered Bilal “BJ”  Abdullah, Pytorcatcha Clarke-Brooks, and Dontae Milton in just 2 weeks. These murders, however, are not part of the “low crime” discussion. Here, “low crime” is not an indicator of safety or well-being as purported, but a metric of efficient pacification of people, demonstrating how a population can be governed through preemptive criminalization and militarized containment.

In direct contrast, Donald Trump’s declaration of “high crime” in Washington, D.C. served as the validation for a different, though related, state objective: the overt militarization of an alleged failed police state. His announcement to deploy the National Guard, framed as a necessary crackdown, marked a dangerous escalation in the federal government’s militarization of the nation’s capital. This move, following the Democrat-backed “Secure DC” Omnibus bill, exposes the seamless continuum of carceral logic. Where the “low crime” narrative justifies a perpetual, normalized occupation, the “high crime” narrative justifies a sudden, overt infusion of military force, effectively blurring the lines between policing and soldiering—a process of policification of the military, as noted by scholar Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelley.  This same framework was deployed months earlier in L.A. to justify aggressive immigration policies, where the foundational narrative of “criminals” pouring across the border legitimized the mass deployment of National Guard troops and provided a pretext for aggressive deportation campaigns. With the subjective use of criminalization to wield repressive policy and action, it becomes increasingly clear how the oppression of immigrants is very relevant for Black communities.

This domestic playbook is exported directly to foreign policy, where “crime” becomes the pretext for neocolonial aggression and the denial of sovereignty and self-determination. The United States’ bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, signalling alleged “criminal drug cartel activity,” is a quintessential example of criminalization as an act of economic and political warfare. This narrative was eagerly adopted by Trinidad and Tobago’s returned Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has aligned herself with far-right ideologies mirroring Trump’s rhetoric. By constantly alluding to her nation’s “high crime” as a direct result of Venezuela, she acts as a neocolonial lapdog, endangering Caribbean solidarity and providing a humanitarian veil for alignment with U.S. military aggression. This cynical blame-shifting obscures a vicious cycle: the United States, through its lax firearm regulations, actively enables the cross-border proliferation of weapons that fuel the very violence destabilizing Caribbean nations. Having exported the tools of violence, the U.S. then offers itself as the necessary military “solution,” a strategy that distracts from its own culpability and strengthens its imperial grip under the pretext of solving a problem it engineered. The crisis in the Caribbean is not fundamentally rooted in violence and crime but in the enduring legacies of imperialism and neoliberalism, which perpetuate systemic inequality, poverty, and underdevelopment.

Nowhere is this dynamic more blatant than in the UN/US-led Kenyan occupation of Haiti. The denial of Haitian sovereignty stands as a testament to a global elite consensus that undermines popular democracy. The deployment of foreign forces, under the guise of combating criminal gangs, is the international manifestation of the “high crime” justification, used to nullify a nation’s right to self-determination. This systematic suppression is a live execution of strategies akin to those in the U.S.’s Global Fragility Act (GFA). The GFA, under the pretext of “preventing conflicts” and “promoting stability,” rebrands US imperialism by leveraging neocolonial governments and local structures to enact policies aimed solely at upholding U.S. global power. Domestically, this looks like aggressive policing that leads to over-policing and racial profiling rather than safety (ie. War Against Crime). Internationally, it looks like Kenya policing Haiti. The recently formed “Alliance for Security, Justice, and Development Strategy” for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) confirms this model. While framed as regional, it is led by US, Interpol, and Europol, prioritizing foreign security interests over local sovereignty and development, effectively creating an international carceral network.

Ultimately, “crime” is the key rhetorical device in the vast project of control over civil society. It is a fallacy because its definition is never neutral; it is engineered by the state to serve the state. It is weaponized because it provides the moral and political capital to expand budgets, deploy troops, build jails, overthrow governments, and occupy nations—all while presenting the aggressor as the guardian of order. If, as theorized, crime is not mere individual deviance but a phenomenon conditioned by the same structures that produce domination, then the modern imperialist state’s power to define criminality becomes its ultimate neocolonial instrument, crafting legal legitimacy for its own material interests.

Furthermore, the Western imperialist framing of “crime” as the arbitrary act of an individual against the social order is exposed as a profound hypocrisy by its enthusiastic support for state-sanctioned violence. This double standard is glaringly evident in the stance of the US and its partners, including CARICOM states that hyperfixate on localized crime, yet all offer little to no criticism of Israel’s genocidal acts and annexation of Gaza, instead continue to support it under the guise of a “right to defend itself,” actively enabling a project of collective punishment in Gaza that meets the legal definitions of war crimes and famine. As children die of starvation (their deaths meticulously tallied by a besieged Health Ministry) the U.S. government withholds the means of survival but rolls out the red carpet for the architect of this catastrophe, Prime Minister Netanyahu, treating an internationally recognized war criminal as an honored statesman. This reveals a brutal calculus: their condemnation of “crime” is a malleable ideology, a tool designed to criminalize the resistance of the oppressed while legitimizing the systemic, industrial-scale violence of the oppressor, proving that the “rule-based international order” is merely the rule of the dominant.

Ultimately, the path to liberation necessitates a fundamental shift in understanding the very concept of “crime” as a political construct engineered to subdue resistance and legitimize state violence. This deconstruction is not an end but a prerequisite, clearing the ideological ground to expose how the language of criminality has been a primary weapon of imperialism and white supremacy. This is not merely a theoretical exercise, but in the battle of ideas in the war waged against the colonized and the poor, it is an essential foundation for how we organize to fight for peoples-centered human rights, collective self-determination, and the material needs of people over the predatory demands of the state and capital.

Erica Caines is a writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. Caines is the Field Operations and Membership coordinator of The Black Alliance For Peace, a member of the Black working-class centered Ujima People’s Progress Party in Maryland, and founder of #LiberationThroughReading, providing African children with books that represent them.

Originally published in Hood Communist.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21664

#colonialism #hoodCommunist #LiberationThroughReading #repression #violence

Bound by Imperialism: Trinidad’s Role in U.S. Agenda

Trinidad is experiencing an unprecedented crime wave. The state has responded by militarizing the police and loosening restrictions on their actions. To understand these mechanisms, one must look at Trinidad’s relationship with the United States.

Trinidad and Tobago has recently declared a state of emergency in response to an alarming surge in violent crime, culminating in a murder toll of 623 for 2024—the highest recorded in the nation’s history. This decision grants police the authority to conduct warrantless searches and detain suspects for up to 48 hours, reflecting the government’s desperation to address escalating gang-related violence and narcotics trafficking. However, this domestic crisis cannot be understood in isolation; it is deeply entangled with the country’s economic woes, neoliberal policies, and an expanding militarized presence shaped by its partnership with the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).

Neoliberalism: A Catalyst For Crime

The crime wave in Trinidad and Tobago is a symptom of deep-seated structural inequalities rather than a mere law enforcement issue. High unemployment, inadequate public services, and systemic corruption have eroded public trust, leaving many feeling abandoned by the state. Neoliberal policies, which prioritize market efficiency over social welfare, exacerbate these challenges by dismantling public institutions and concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Emphasizing privatization, deregulation, and reduced government spending, these policies have widened income inequality and weakened social safety nets. Higher utility rates , the sale of state assets to foreign multinationals , and regressive taxation disproportionately burden the working class. This growing inequality is starkly visible in the education and healthcare systems, where access is often determined by socio-economic status, fostering social unrest and driving crime, as economic despair pushes individuals toward desperate means of survival. Similarly, insufficient governance and failing state institutions further marginalize the most vulnerable, perpetuating cycles of poverty and crime. The government’s reliance on punitive measures, such as the state of emergency, does little to address these root causes, instead criminalizing the very communities most affected by systemic neglect.

Trinidad and Tobago’s economic structure has long been tethered to its energy sector, which accounts for over 36% of GDP (2022). Despite this wealth in natural resources, the nation’s dual economy—split between the energy sector and services such as distribution, hospitality, and financial services—has left it vulnerable to global commodity price fluctuations. Trinidad and Tobago’s financial reality is rooted in a legacy where energy independence was never a goal, much like its political independence failed to prioritize true nation-building and sovereignty. As Law and Industrial Relations Specialist Clyde Weatherhead noted , “ at the advent of Independence, the economy experienced difficulties as oil prices slumped in 1962 and other sectors were not creating jobs or foreign exchange earnings as projected.”

The nation’s proposed reliance on Venezuelan gas—subject to U.S. permission—underscores its vulnerability to imperialist dictates, rather than fostering self-reliance or energy security. This dependence not only undermines Venezuelan sovereignty but also exposes Trinidad and Tobago to greater external control without guaranteeing stable energy resources. Economic instability, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on tourism-dependent Caribbean economies, has fueled unemployment and poverty. These conditions have created fertile ground for crime, as marginalized individuals, facing limited opportunities, turn to illicit activities for survival.

The SOUTHCOM Capture of Trinidad & Tobago

The government’s response to crime is heavily influenced by its growing partnership with SOUTHCOM. This relationship, formalized through military exercises such as Operation Tradewinds , positions Trinidad and Tobago as a key player in a broader U.S.-led strategy to militarize the Caribbean. These exercises, framed as efforts to counter transnational criminal organizations, provide humanitarian assistance, and conduct disaster relief, mask their true intent: ensuring U.S. hegemony in the region. Sponsored by SOUTHCOM, it involves the participation of multiple nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and European allies, alongside Caribbean states. While ostensibly about regional security, these operations serve as conduits for U.S. influence, allowing it to maintain a neo-colonial presence under the guise of cooperation. Terms like “humanitarian assistance” and “transnational crime” become substitutes for suppressing grassroots resistance and protecting U.S. corporate interests.

Trinidad and Tobago’s partnership with SOUTHCOM reflects a broader pattern of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean. By positioning itself as a “lapdog” to U.S. policies, the government sacrifices national sovereignty and undermines its ability to pursue independent development strategies. This complicity ensures the continuation of a neo-colonial relationship in which Trinidad and Tobago’s resources and strategic location are leveraged to serve U.S. interests.

The influx of firearms from the United States , a major contributor to the nation’s crime problem, underscores the hypocrisy of this arrangement. While the U.S. advocates for increased militarization to combat crime, its own policies enable the proliferation of weapons that fuel violence in Trinidad and Tobago. This cycle of dependency and exploitation illustrates the inherent contradictions of U.S.-led security initiatives.

The parallels between the U.S.’s use of crime to justify the militarized occupation of African communities and its role in fostering a militarized Caribbean region are striking. Just as narratives of “crime prevention” serve to rationalize the suppression of grassroots movements and justify the expansion of militarized police forces in African communities, domestically, the same logic underpins U.S. engagement in the Caribbean. By framing military exercises and partnerships like Operation Tradewinds as necessary for combating “transnational crime” and promoting “regional stability,” the U.S. advances its hegemonic ambitions and entrenches neoliberal policies that prioritize corporate and imperial interests over local autonomy and development. The militarization of both domestic spaces and the Caribbean underscores a broader strategy: the consolidation of power through surveillance, force, and economic subjugation, all while cloaked in the rhetoric of security and aid.

Historical Context: A Legacy of Intervention

Trinidad and Tobago’s current predicament is not without historical precedent . The 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada marked a turning point in Caribbean geopolitics, embedding U.S. militarization within the region. At the time, conservative Caribbean leaders, seeking political longevity, aligned with U.S. interests to suppress revolutionary movements and leftist ideologies. This alliance expanded security initiatives across the region but failed to address the underlying economic challenges. Instead, it fortified U.S. security agencies and bolstered weapons manufacturers while leaving Caribbean nations mired in economic stagnation.

Opposition to this militarization was not universal. Countries like Trinidad and Tobago, and Belize resisted U.S. interference , advocating for sovereignty and regional peace. However, their voices were often drowned out by pro-U.S. governments eager to benefit from security aid. Today, the legacy of these alliances persists, as Trinidad and Tobago finds itself enmeshed in a web of U.S.-led initiatives that prioritize security over socio-economic development.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM), established to foster economic integration and cooperation, has revealed stark contradictions in its stance on regional militarization, particularly in the case of Haiti . While it proclaims the Caribbean a “zone of peace,” CARICOM has failed to counter U.S. influence and instead remains complicit. Member states’ participation in U.S.-sponsored military exercises like Operation Tradewinds undermines claims of regional sovereignty and non-intervention.

Moreover, CARICOM’s inability to address economic disparities driving crime exposes its limitations as a regional body. Without a unified strategy to challenge neoliberal policies and their consequences, it perpetuates the very conditions it aims to resolve.

The state of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago only further highlights the intersections of crime, economic inequality, and imperialism in the Caribbean. The government’s partnership with SOUTHCOM, while framed as a solution, reinforces a cycle of dependency and exploitation. True progress demands a holistic approach that centers economic justice, regional sovereignty, and grassroots empowerment, a People(s) Centered Human Rights approach)

Erica Caines is a writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. Caines is the Field Operations and Membership coordinator of The Black Alliance For Peace, a member of the Black working-class centered Ujima People’s Progress Party in Maryland, and founder of #LiberationThroughReading, providing African children with books that represent them.

source: Black Agenda Report

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13674

#blackLiberation #caribbean #colonialism #imperialism #LiberationThroughReading #trinidad