Maoist Internationalist Movement
Where we are at theoretically at the end
February 15 2008
[The masses have less than three days left to break the encirclement of MIM, and we see them trying, but in case they do not punch through, we have already started preparations for tidying up. There is a new website, "MIM Lite."]
In the end, it can be as simple as the politics of death threats against MIM. It is not accountable for MIM to allow various political forces to play both sides. People promoting those making death threats against MIM are not MIM's friends. For this reason MIM is leaving the field to the leaders the so-called masses deserve. The masses did not bail MIM out and re-organize the struggle as requested, and so we are left in a form of intra-bourgeois struggle only, a struggle that might be better taken up in other ways, perhaps as bourgeois politicians or single-issue activists. "MIM Lite" will try to organize where there is still some opportunity.
The Senate's passage of expanded spying powers February 12 is a typical example of how MIM is correct. We warned our supposed friends not to make an issue out of spying, because instead of reducing surveillance, going to Congress only raised an opportunity to increase it. For some, it is impossible to grasp that Amerika could be so evil that surveillance is here to stay and not just a passing fad of the Bush regime.
MIM had wanted to take up a stepped up approach to struggles in 2008 and attract additional assassination talk on itself. Yet we found crypto-Trotskyist circles doing the bidding of U.$. and I$raeli interests while conniving with Gorbachev-era social democrats. Despite this, the international ability to judge was lacking or maybe in many cases, the guts to judge was lacking.
MIM could be in the midst of an intense struggle and find itself attacked by Joey Crackertopian--and this could be misinterpreted by people more paranoid than MIM and cause political repercussions beyond Joey Crackertopian's dreams. Picturing this, it would create potential havoc despite whatever well- meaning intentions MIM had for making friends for Maoism internationally. Being assassinated for the right reasons is important. The oppressed cannot count on the vanguard otherwise.
The Communist Party of India(Maoist) intervened in our struggle, whether to make threats more real or to assist ideologically to prevent a repeat of how they accomplished their merger. One faction basically killed off leaders of another.
The trouble with the Third World struggles is that none are at the stage of scaling the heights from socialism to communism and thus needing clarity on what is proletarian and what is not. Currently, all Third World struggles are at a bourgeois stage of struggle with leaders from the bourgeoisie. Thus, the capitalist class in fact mediates the class struggle globally at this time, whether various opponents of Mao's Three Worlds strategy want to acknowledge that reality or not. Typically the Hoxhaites complain that Mao's Three Worlds idea overlooked the exploiter nature of a man like Saddam Hussein or even Pinochet. Yet today we can see even in the case of Stalin or his successors, the imperialists at the very least would offer bribes equivalent of capitalist status. Hence, at this time, anyone saying that it is possible to evade capitalist mediation of the class struggle is unrealistic. Even Hoxha and Mao themselves were structurally capitalist.
The notion that labor bureaucrats swindle Western so-called workers became outdated long ago, but the alleged Maoist leaders of the world easily swindle or sidestep the exploited forces of the Third World, because of the low stage of struggle that we are in. Thus the idea of a thin stratum of labor bureaucrats or party officials who mislead the exploited is still quite relevant globally. This problem is aggravated by how post-modernism has siphoned off the real intellectuals vanguard parties need to lead. MIM has pointed again and again to a crisis of judgment, a lack of discernment and a need for decisively scientifically-oriented purges to counteract post-modernist siphoning and the realities of the labor bureaucracy globally. Others seeing the same problem proposed increased recruiting of the imperialist country middle-classes for hand-holding purposes and dilution of the scientific content of the party during this ebb period. MIM holds that the opposition to quality is in fact lengthening the ebb period, which has the merit of weeding out lower quality forces, a relative fact that must be made use of.
Mao's Three Worlds strategy is a strategy, because it is for the period of time in which capitalists will continue to mediate the class struggle. The Three Worlds strategy is not a generalization of how to reach communism. It will come apart as the First World loses its status as First World. Then a new strategy will be necessary.
Although a portion of labor bureaucrats and other entrenched professionals can see that China is now capitalist, the appeal of Deng Xiaoping's theory of productive forces is almost universal in opposing us. The idea that Westerners are simply more advanced technologically is easier to accept than the work of understanding surplus-value and super-exploitation. Immersed in bourgeois struggles themselves, the bourgeois leaders of the class struggles in the Third World generally see no reason not to ally themselves with labor aristocracy organizations of the imperialist countries. Even Trotskyist ideas about a world party find ready acceptance among capitalist leaders mediating the struggles of the exploited.
Essentially immersed in an intra-bourgeois struggle with various bourgeois leaders blocking the will of the exploited, MIM proposed the Kobe Bryant thought experiment. Now we see what happens when Kobe Bryant leaves the basketball court. We will see what happens to the team record without him. Already some negative things have happened as the enemy perceives MIM's vacation. This is the accountable way to learn from practice. Some will see no loss at all and they will follow their leaders of old. Others may see some loss and contemplate how that should be translated into struggle.
There will be no new content here, no more stepping on toes and no defense of political gains if any. "MIM Lite" will take up the few leftover tasks. For the original MIM pages, we will work on spiffing up the old links and index pages and uploading the old MIM Theory magazines. Those who have read the MIM magazine materials and website as it has gone along will find themselves done and bored.