It is objectively necessary to put forth a Bolshevik program. "Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice." -- Lenin. "The crisis of mankind reduces itself to the crisis of revolutionary proletarian leadership." -- Trotsky.

Sitting back and letting things unfold is not a Bolshevik approach.

I put forth the semblance of a Bolshevik program.

I suggested to the workers to form workers councils.

The crying need in Iran is for a revolutionary socialist -- a revolutionary communist -- workers' party, a revolutionary leadership, to particularly intersect the oil workers and develop a revolutionary proletarian leadership of the exploited and toiling and oppressed masses.

Sitting back on one's hind quarters and saying, let things unfold before we say anything, is Menshevism, two-stagism, liberalism, Stalinism, but it is not communism and not Bolshevism.

I am particularly surprised that the best you can think of as what might develop is a February Revolution leading to a Kerensky, too.

What is objectively posed is the objective need for an Iranian proletarian dictatorship comprised of elected workers' councils -- oil workers' councils, farm workers' councils, workers' councils as simultaneously both the organs of revolutionary proletarian class struggle against the regime -- every faction of it -- and also as the embryonic organs of a dictatorship of the proletariat, a revolutionary communist proletarian democracy for the toilers and a revolutionary communist proletarian dictatorship against all the old exploiters and oppressors, including against the old theocratic Islamic parastic clergy, every faction of it.

Letting things unfold was not and is not the purpose of what I wrote. Rather, what I wrote was intended as putting forth the rudiments of a communist program to intersect the unfolding events in Iran. It is objectively necessary to do that.

Does that mean that on the ground, it will be easy? No. I expect it will be dangerous and very hard, and that the work, or a lot of it, may have to be clandestine at the start, among some.

But I put forth what I saw as the basis and rudiments of a communist program, and that is the role of a communist leadership, to suggest to the working classes the tasks of the hour.

Sitting back and waiting is not the way a revolutionary leadership ought to act.

I would here add several other provisions to what I put forth.

The main provision is this: under any and all circumstances, U.S. IMPERIALISM: HANDS OFF IRAN!, and in the eventuality of WHICHEVER faction heads up Iran, FOR THE MILITARY DEFEAT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM IF IT INTERVENES IN IRAN! I am an American communist, and Lenin argued for revolutionary defeatism, that in imperialist wars, the defeat of "one's own" bourgeoisie and "one's own" bourgeois government, is the "lesser evil," and that is ESPECIALLY the case in a tumultuous and unfolding situation of the Iranian sort when American imperialism's invasion or intervention COULD ONLY HAVE THE EFFECT OF CEMENTING SUPPORT OF THE POPULAR MASSES TO THE RULING CLASSES OF IRAN.

I suggested the liberation of women and homosexuals for the reason that the INTERSECTION of the bourgeois-democratic tasks with the FIGHT FOR PROLETARIAN POWER is the PERSPECTIVE OF THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION, and THAT IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD for Iran. The permanent revolution is the perspective of the DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT COMPRISED OF ELECTED COUNCILS OF THE WORKERS to SIMULTANEOUSLY TRANSCEND BOURGEOIS RULE and ACHIEVE PROLETARIAN RULE -- to achieve the final end of all oppression of women, homosexuals, VIA THE ROAD OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AGAINST CAPITALISM.

The MESHING of the fight for democratic tasks with the fight for socialist revolution -- for a communist Iran, a Red Iran of Workers' Councils -- is the road forward. That is the Marxist perspective of the permanent revolution as embodied in Marx's 1850 point about the revolution in permanence having been the only road forward and Trotsky's 1906 point in his book, Results and Prospects, as the point of the permanent revolution being the only road forward, and in Trotsky's 1929 book, Permanent Revolution, making the same point.

FIGHT FOR THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT IN IRAN, and in so doing, FOR A TOILERS' COMMUNIST DEMOCRACY COMPRISED OF ELECTED WORKERS COUNCILS COMPRISING AN IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS' GOVERNMENT WITH A FOREIGN POLICY OF REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAN COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALISM ENCOURAGING WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD as the road forward.

THAT is the road forward.

And the ROLE of REVOLUTIONARIES is to SAY WHAT IS TO THE MASSES, NOT sit back and simply "let things unfold."

Tactically taking account of individual situations on the ground is, of course, objectively necessary, and if it requires clandestinity, or taking account of the presence of the old Islamic paramilitary scum, that is what it requires.

But that is NOT the same thing as "letting things unfold," which OBJECTIVELY aids in HOLDING BACK the MASSES OF THE TOILERS FROM ENTERING INTO THE FIGHT IN THEIR OWN INDEPENDENT COMMUNIST PROLETARIAN CLASS INTERESTS.

You can SAY that is the necessity, but IF YOU DON'T PUT FLESH AND BLOOD ON THE BONES OF SAYING THAT, you will be OBJECTIVELY aiding the counter-revolution in Iran, the Islamic theocracy and the bourgeois capitalist system it oversees.