From owner-marxism Sat Sep 16 02:03:35 1995

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 22:03:35 -0400 (EDT)

From: Maoist Internationalist Movement

Subject: Re: MIM

On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, jones/bhandari wrote:

> I have read some of MIM's literature.

> 1. productive labor

> What a joke! MIM uses this criterion to bash the proletariat in the

> imperialist countries but then do they support productive labor in the

> semi-colonies? No, they urge alliances with the national bourgeoisie. So

MIM replies: Why stop there? We support Stalin's pact with Hitler in 1939. We also think it was great to take material aid from the imperialist Allies to defeat Hitler after 1941 (Hitler's invasion of the USSR). We also had no objection when the Kaiser sent Lenin back to Russia in a train car.

The national bourgeoisie is easier to handle than Hitler and Churchill were.

This is another post which has turned some dogma written in some book into an absolute moral principle--a practice we call idealist and pre-scientific. Mao notes in his writings that capitalists in China paid Trotskyists to write and distribute such stuff, because it attacked the revolutionaries for not being "pure" enough. If the bourgeoisie succeeds in getting the movement to split into a part using science that can win and a part that has no chance of winning anything but a poetry contest, then the bourgeoisie figures it was money well-spent.

Many well-meaning people are attracted to such idealism, and they are allowed to go un-rebutted by right opportunists and metaphysicians who think such idealism is not worth dealing with.

> it turns out that their criterion of productive labor is not used to defend

> a principled proletarian exclusivism at all. It is merely used to dismiss

> the importance of revolutionary class struggle in the imperialist countries

MIM replies: You are calling white labor activism "revolutionary."

We see it as fine negotiations of parasitism. If you can't recognize that, you can't do what is dialectically possible for revolution within existing material conditions.

> (the importance of which is brilliantly discussed in Walter Daum's book The

> Life and Death of Stalinism). And where's the proof that the proletariat

> has to be productive (of surplus value) in order to be revolutionary? Many

> wage slaves in the service industries make less than some of those in the

> manufacturing industries in the imperialist countries. In Carchedi's

> analysis, workers can be oppressed without being formally exploited. And

MIM replies: So why can't a national bourgeoisie or a section of it as Mao said, be oppressed but not exploited? You are so sympathetic to imperialist country workers and so hostile to the oppressed nation classes oppressed by imperialism. When the bombs dropped on Vietnam, they didn't land only on proletarians.

> what about the growing technologically unemployed or in the phrase of JE

> Cairnes 'non-competing groups'?

MIM replies: What about the facts of the white working class's material conditions overall since World War II? (Read MT#1)

[portion deleted]

> > 3. misuse of Lenin

> in that passage from Lenin, it is clear that he did not take the labor

> aristocracy to be as encompassing as claimed by MIM. And in Engels

MIM replies: Did you read it? I post two lousy quotes and you didn't read them. The one from Lenin said "entire nations." How could the labor aristocracy not be all encompassing unless the revolution has won victory and I didn't notice?

> comments on the topic, it is clear the persistence of labor conservatism on

> a mass basis depended on the monopolistic position of British capital, sure

> to whither away.

MIM replies: No quite the contrary, it was not sure to whither away

(immediately) and in fact, according to Lenin and

the COMINTERN (that included Trotsky), the labor

aristocracy spread to several other

imperialist countries which previously had no labor aristocracy.

> 4. MIM on Black nationalism

> MIM has suggested that it is treasonous to fight fascist nationalism in the

> Black community.

MIM replies: As Mao suggested, we take an independent stance toward the national bourgeoisie. We have criticized the Nation of Islam in our paper. We also uphold it like anyone else when it/they are correct. Of the two evils, narrow nationalism by oppressed nations and great nation chauvinism of the imperialist countries, we believe the situation is unchanged since Lenin's day and great nation chauvinism is the greater danger. That is to say the position of jones/bhandari hostile to non-proletarian classes of oppressed nations is a greater evil than NOI.

The petty-bourgeoisie and smaller bourgeoisie of the Black nation is not allowed to exploit Black workers on the scale that the imperialists are. Indeed, the Black nation is still occupied and posts that the the Black bourgeoisie lusts for, contracts it wants etc. are taken by whites. For this reason,we can make a temporary alliance with the Black bourgeoisie so affected.

The Trotskyists and some anarchists stress how evil we in the tradition of Stalin and Mao are for the alliances we make.

It's little wonder that the Trotskyists haven't led any successful armed struggles against imperialism since Lenin died.

The COMINTERN said communists should find a way to ally with >semi-proletarians like office workers, after they allied with the peasants. There is nothing new in what MIM says, which doesn't mean MIM is correct, just that those claiming we are outside the victorious traditions of Marx and Lenin are wrong.

Pat for MIM

--- from list marxism@lists.village.virginia.edu ---