Currently, many internal optimists within the Left maintain a positive outlook on the situation in Iran. However, regarding the actions the United States may soon take against Cuba, such blind optimism will only place us in a state of extreme peril.

In reality, our immediate mandate consists of two pillars: holding the line in Cuba and reconstructing the organization within the United States.

To achieve this, a clear-eyed assessment of the former is paramount. We must understand the nature of U.S. military operations in 2026 thus far, and the strategic logic driving their perception of the current global theater.

The success of the U.S. decapitation strike in Venezuela was largely due to the fact that the Venezuelan regime relied excessively on Maduro himself—a government defined by personalist authoritarianism. Consequently, he was surrounded not by "comrades" in any revolutionary sense, but by "subjects." When the U.S. successfully executed the decapitation, these subjects were incapable of an effective handover of state power. Instead, the nation collapsed into internal chaos upon the fall of its central pillar, allowing a U.S.-backed puppet to easily seize control. Furthermore, under Maduro’s personal rule, Venezuela had already spiraled into a vicious cycle of economic decay, fueling widespread mass discontent. This mirrors the situation I mentioned in my previous letter regarding the Left: cults of personality make an organization pathologically dependent on a leader; once the leader degenerates, the masses are lost.

Iran, however, presents a different structural reality. Since the 1979 Revolution, Khomeini’s ascent was underpinned by his immense status as a Grand Ayatollah among the high clergy. His successor, Khamenei, lacked such transcendent religious authority; therefore, his reign necessitated extensive "class buy-offs" (specifically of the Revolutionary Guard and the clerical strata) to maintain stability. Khamenei’s role in the war months ago was that of a mediator between the hawks and the doves. Now, the direct consequence of the U.S. targeted liquidation is that the hawks have gained total dominance, fueled by the fury of the masses and the ruling class. We are now witnessing a "humorous" irony: the more the U.S. employs decapitation strikes, the more it ignites a transcendental sentiment of "martyrdom for the Jihad" within Iran.

The external environments are also fundamentally distinct. Venezuela is separated from the U.S. only by the Caribbean, allowing the U.S. fleet to enforce a total encirclement. Geographically, Venezuela lacks any genuine regional allies. Iran’s situation is the polar opposite. Due to decades of U.S. imperialist hegemony, the grassroots across the Middle East harbor a primal resentment toward the U.S., compounded by Israel's actions in Palestine over the last two years. Thus, Iran holds absolute moral and legal superiority in the regional theater—not to mention its access to the Eurasian heartland. If China and Russia so choose, support can be channeled through clandestine inland routes (a matter of strategic speculation, left to the reader’s discretion).

Therefore, while we may be cautiously optimistic about Iran, this is no excuse for complacency. To sink back into internal infighting is to squander our window of opportunity. The situation in Cuba is far more dire.

As an island nation in the Caribbean, Cuba’s physical proximity to the United States is extreme, making effective material support from anti-imperialist forces nearly impossible. We are already seeing Cuba, under the weight of the blockade, beginning to adopt "open-door" policies. If the Cuban front is lost, the U.S. will secure its "backyard" in Latin America once and for all, allowing it to pivot its full strength toward domestic purges and imperialist wars in the Middle and Far East.

Yet, this is precisely our opening. When the U.S. is fixated on the crisis at its doorstep in Cuba and the quagmire in the Middle East, its domestic defenses will inevitably fracture. In this moment, as the front lines are on the verge of collapse, we find our absolute opportunity to reconstruct the organization. The process of rebuilding our organization is, simultaneously, the process of helping the international movement hold its ground.

Given the current strategic conjuncture, the so-called "Program" proposed by DSA comrades has become of paramount importance. I refer to the insights of Nikoli Weir in the Letter: The Importance of the Revolutionary Program (Sept. 2, 2025), as quoted below:

Without a revolutionary program, there can be no revolutionary party. The program is the living document that directs all the activity of the party... The highest authority of the organization should be its program, which unites the membership of the organization under its banner... any talk of democracy that is mechanically separated from the program and its directives is nothing more than liberal jabbering.

The comrades in the DSA have already attained a clear understanding regarding the construction of the organizational program. I believe little needs to be added; we should cite it directly. Immediate action under this framework is now a necessity. Regarding the ongoing debates concerning "Queer movements" versus the "traditional working class," I contend that while a mass conversion of traditional industrial workers is difficult under current conditions, the youth represent our primary strategic opening.

Having defined the nature of the organization, we must answer: Who is the mainstay of the organization? And how should the organization be developed?

Regarding the mainstay: identity politicians have long debated whether traditional workers still possess "revolutionary primality." I argue that the most advanced representatives of the forces of production today are the Intellectual Proletariat—those whose labor is primarily intellectual—rather than traditional industrial workers. Leading-edge productive forces, such as Artificial Intelligence and automation, are largely displacing "humanity" as the primary element of manual labor. When machines replace concrete labor on a mass scale, those operating these machines behind the scenes remain nothing more than a higher form of the proletariat.

The leap in productivity brought by these technologies is staggering, yet it inevitably leads to mass unemployment in traditional factories, giving rise to contemporary Luddites. From a strategic perspective, Luddism is profoundly reactionary. We can no longer rely on old methods to bring traditional industrial workers to our side. Therefore, the Intellectual Proletariat, representing the most advanced forces of production, must be our core cadre. In this new alignment, the role of the industrial worker is analogous to that of the peasantry in the historical Worker-Peasant Alliance.

I will elaborate on this structural analysis in subsequent articles.

Continuing this analogy, we must recognize that just as in the historical alliance, the fact that traditional workers are no longer the most advanced sector does not mean we should marginalize them in favor of "fringe minorities," thereby creating internal proletarian antagonism. Certain extremist Identity Politicians are, in this regard, a poison to the Left—unwitting accomplices of U.S. imperialism who plunge the domestic proletariat into fratricidal conflict. These so-called "marginalized groups" championed by identity politics are not, in fact, the most advanced revolutionary subjects.

The error of identity politics is glaring: it classifies subjects based on moral sentiment and social status—categories that are inherently exclusionary and relative. Only a classification based on economic structure represents a person’s long-term, objective subject position. A rational choice dictates that we divide the movement according to labor modes within the economic structure, rather than along the lines of "conservatives vs. immigrants" or "queer communities." Such a revolutionary force is too easily fragmented and co-opted. If an organization’s mainstay is mired in conflicts of "White vs. Black" or "Native vs. Immigrant," it serves only the interests of the ruling class. These factions do not seek to unite the majority in struggle; instead, they perform "identity excision" to preserve a small, supposedly "progressive" clique. Such fragmented, emotional energy is weak and doomed to failure.

Thus, regarding the second question—how to develop the organization: The current priority is to break free from the influence of identity politics. We should win over whom we can, as a stronger Left is always preferable. However, the masses remain the true subject of power. We cannot abandon "conservative" workers as a source of organizational strength—just as the peasantry once constituted the vast majority of the labor base—but we must simultaneously "open the source" of the frequently ignored Intellectual Proletariat. Finally, we must organize the youth, especially educated technical operators. Their power in the movement far exceeds that of the ivory-tower researchers in their studies.

Timing is everything. Theoretical output cannot be achieved overnight. Comrades become allies within the struggle, not before it. Only combat can filter out those truly willing to fight; only then does our theory gain its full meaning.

I will provide detailed discourse in future writings. However, if we wait for perfect theoretical descriptions, we will miss the window of opportunity. The current situation may seem far from its boiling point, but once the crisis escalates, it will be too late to act.

As for how to support the comrades in Iran and Cuba at this moment: I must humbly admit I lack concrete experience in direct support. This is the second purpose of this letter—I seek guidance from the comrades currently fighting at the heart of the capitalist empire.

Benjamin Marshall