From owner-marxism Mon Sep 18 06:44:47 1995

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 02:44:47 -0400 (EDT)

From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>

Subject: Re: homeownership and Black Panthers

On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, jones/bhandari wrote:

>

> MIM is aiding in the development of race consciousness, as is the US Census

> Bureau, by repeating statistics kept in race. And what are the

> implications of race consciousness in terms of the goal of classless

> society? (MIM may way want to check out Yehudi Webster's Racialization in

> America. St Martin's Press, 1992).

MIM replies: As Mao said, the nationalism of the oppressed nations

is applied internationalism. Internationalism cannot now mean that

all peoples give up their national interests equally, anymore than

socialism can mean all peoples give up their property equally.

>

> You never answered my question of what you have found salient about the

> relationship between 'race' (anyways, what is the objective criterion to

> determine one's membership in a 'race') and homeownership? Why not between

> income and homeownership? Income can obviously be determined objectively.

> Can 'race'?

MIM replies: This thread has gone far afield. If you trace it back,

you will see that we responded to the false and dangerous notion that

just because people from two nations share the same job they are from

the same class. (In actuality, the notion that whites and oppressed

nationalities are in the same job is a myth to begin with.) We

pointed to differences in expectations for

property ownership, upward mobility and children's upward mobility.

Others ask us about the secondary aspects of the relations of production like income, and surely that difference also exists. At the same time, we noted that our critics usually don't mind talking about separate Canadian, English and what they call "U.S." working classes, when in fact the differences amongst those classes is smaller than those between Black and white, Latino and white, First Nation and white

and Asian-descended and white working classes. The proportion of

unproductive laborers is a key difference amongst working classes

internationally. Our critics are trying to obscure this in

deference to borders the imperialists created.

In the 1960s, the Black proletariat acted as a class for itself,

with Black Panther leadership. The same cannot be said of white workers, who could not stomach a conflict with the state, because of their overall interests as a labor aristocracy. That quote from E.P. Thompson is perfectly relevant here. The "it" in question is the industrial workforce where people from all nations are supposedly all the same, when in fact, different nations' workers show different levels of consciousness and carry different historical burdens, and when in fact, the proportion of the workers' peers in unproductive labor differs radically from nation to nation.

Some will read that Thompson quote as a justification for saying

everyone is a worker no matter how reactionary and can

be talked into socialism or that everyone is proletarian no matter actual material differences. Others will see

it as justifying existential doubt in an idealist way. We are happy

to point to production relations too though and believe the Thompson

quote applies as much or more against our opponents as it does against

us. The relationship that must be grasped is the alliance between the

labor aristocracy and imperialism as against the exploited and super-

exploited. Such thinking requires going beyond official government

borders.

>

>

> MIM deduces the existence of the labor aristocracy from the following:

>

> > The fact that more than half the white work force can

> >sit around in office work, shuffle paper and work tepidly toward

> >technical and scientific progress is all an indication that they

> >can survive on the necessities of life provided by Third World

> >proletarians repressed by U.S.-backed military regimes.

>

> As I have already pointed out, MIM's glorification of the labor productive

> of durable-vendible commodities (which shows their use of the Smithean

> criterion of productive labor)is disingenuous. MIM does not champion

> productive labor, however defined, but the national bourgeoisie, which they

> conflate with workers in the tradition of Friedrich List and....

MIM replies: Only for those who cannot follow this, I will say that

the above is a polemic but not a literal truth. Mao was for proletarian

leadership of the peasantry and for that alliance's corralling of the

wannabe sector of the national bourgeoisie that felt cut out of the

action by imperialism. That sector of the national bourgeoisie which

in fact benefitted from its alliance with imperialism, usually through

its role as puppet in the state, Mao called "comprador" enemy.

Our critic here needs to be asked a common question: "We know what

you are against. What are you FOR?" Marxism-Leninism in the traditions of Stalin and Mao has done more to mobilize productive laborers than

any other ideology this century. It is only idealism to say that

it didn't do enough. The point is to show something that worked better

in practice, but that will be impossible for our critic to do.

The only possible recourse is for the idealist enterprise of comparing

Maoist practice with ideals that our critic holds, instead of comparing

two practices.

As for our strategy of allying with a national bourgeoisie at times,

or our strategy of allying with one faction of imperialists against another sometimes, our critic opposes us. By 1995 we can say that this is a perverse desire to see the proletariat on the losing side of

strategic battles--all for the benefit of our nihilist-idealist-purist

critics' ideals as stated somewhere in a poetry collection.

>

> That is, they don't turn away from the US because there is no substantial

> productive labor and then embrace it where they find it. Instead, they bow

> down to 'oppressed' national bourgeoisie (which, as competitive and

> technically backward capitals, undoubtedly don't get their 'fair' share of

> surplus value, something which seems to have made MIM enough indignant

> enough to accuse me of disregard for the people of the third world).

>

> On to their next point (which I do not reproduce), MIM does not understand

> the basic concept of extra surplus value. Of course innovators gain extra

> surplus value, and it is possible that workers for those innovative

> capitals may gain from it, though--as the conditions of production are

> continually revolutionized--most of that surplus value will have to be

> accumulated if the capital is to prolong its life. But the redistribution

MIM replies: There is a lot of surplus-value to be realized that

the capitalist risks losing when superexploiting labor. There is

plenty of space for our white-collar workers in that stage of

economic life alone. The ramifications of borders, militaries

and unfree wage-labor must be accounted for and not assumed away

in a fairy-tale of Third World workers gaining the price of their

reproduction, as if it were the same as the reproduction of

parasites in the imperialist countries.

> of value which makes possible the gain of extra surplus value for the

> innovator works on both a national and international level. So there is no

> reason to suppose that value is only redistributed on an an international

> scale.

MIM replies: Like your remarks about the Black Panthers, what is

missing from your discussion of home ownership and discrimination and

now what is missing in the above--we see crypto-chauvinism. Why don't

you just spell out what you are saying about Blacks and upward

mobility, their children's future, homeownership and why Sri Lankan

wages have been recorded at 4% of U.S. wages in the industrial sector.

And for any Peruvian, Filipino, Kampuchean, ex-Black Panther

or white youth reading this, I hope you can see that the problem of the imperialist country "left" is all partially related to this one question. It's no mistake all the hostility toward Third World revolution coinciding with the abandonment of the early COMINTERN's definition of productive labor.

> > This is more idealism. First they blame

> >the Black Panther Party's relative lack of support from white workers

> >as the Black Panther's fault instead of the labor aristocracy's fault.

> >Notice which of us has a materialist theory that explains that fact.

>

> MIM, I did not blame the BPP for anything (at least not in my posts, though

> to forgo a critical examination of it is ridiculous). I only noted that

> mass-based class action is necessary if a lot people are not to going to

> end up dead. You don't think this is possible becauseo somethng which you

> call the political economy of the white working class, unable to see its

> relationship to Keynesian debt-financing and its limits in real life, as

> now manifest.

>

>

> Rakesh Bhandari

MIM replies: We said nothing about imperialism's being able

to maintain this forever. We do not think revolution is tomorrow in the

imperialist countries and we are trying to wean people away from

the 1929 political economy of that position. To take advantage

of the next upsurge and crisis, we need to know who to mobilize and

whose demands will dialectically paralyze us or turn against us. Did

someone say unintended consequences?

We see that Jerry and some others are questioning if the

proletariat should still be defined as "nothing to lose but its chains."

That's fine. We are sticking to our tradition, because food, shelter,

clothing and political repression and war connected to those

haven't been taken care of yet. We wish others well and hope they

do discover something new, though we doubt it given the

decadence of imperialism.

Others opposing our "orthodoxy" should cease trying to smuggle

unproductive labor into the proletariat and openly take up

the post-modernist project. Catharine MacKinnon is someone we

find quite useful. She's "post-Marxist." We don't get terribly

angry with people who don't claim our tradition. We only get

upset with those confusing things when they claim Lenin, Stalin or

Mao. On a list like this one, the chances are higher than elsewhere

of someone's laying a confused claim to Lenin,

thus our concern.

Pat for MIM

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

From owner-marxism Sat Sep 30 01:30:04 1995

Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 21:30:04 -0400 (EDT)

From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@nyxfer.blythe.org>

Subject: Re: Summary please?

On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Chris Burford wrote:

> Could anyone please summarise the exchanges that took place between

> MIM and Rakesh and others about a week ago? The thread was entitled

> about home ownership.

>

> Unfortunately I had to skim at the time. I picked up that there was

> a political conflict about whether the majority white working class was

> hopelessly lost to revolutionary theory.

>

> There was an economic argument about the nature of economic privilege for

> the mass of the population in advanced capitalist countries. I understood

> MIM to have extended Lenin's argument about a whole stratum of the

> working class being corrupted by imperialism, to the class as a whole.

> The economic theory behind this would be interesting.

>

MIM replies:

Just one comment on the above: the labor aristocracy is as a class

lost to the proletariat. If it does some day return to the proletariat,

along with the petty-bourgeoisie generally crushed by drastic

crises, that does not mean we should cater to the labor aristocracy

qua labor aristocracy now. Instead we should develop a movement

in connection to the anarchy of production, feminism and above

all anti-imperialism. We have the experience of recruiting

enlightened labor aristocracy people, but not for their class

demands. That's a comment on their being lost to proletarian theory

as Chris says above. The minority of the world's workers situated

in the imperialist countries are lost to proletarian theory as

a class, which is not to say we won't rip some away as individuals.

To summarize our side of the coin, we came to the Marxism List

initially to discuss one topic--the concept of unproductive

labor in Marxism.

Our theses on the imperialists countries can be outlined as follows:

1. It is now factually undeniable that the majority of workers in

imperialist countries are unproductive workers if we go back

to the term as originally applied by the COMINTERN of Lenin, Stalin

and even Trotsky.

One critic said that unemployed workers in the Third World

are also unproductive. This critic missed two things:

a) There is a big difference between someone with "nothing

to lose but their chains" as the definition of proletarian originally went

on the one hand and the white-collar workers with salaries and

properties deriving from a share of superprofits.

b) The critic is of the general Eurocentric sort who does not

realize that pre-capitalist modes of production including

subsistence agriculture entail a different kind of work

than what is called "regular employment" in the imperialist

countries. Such work by the very poor is not parasitic.

Critics elsewhere believe that all salaried workers are "productive,"

because capitalists make a profit off them supposedly.

Hence according to the Spartacist League and many others,

the baseball players are "workers" and not parasites. We argue

that this is to gut and make meaningless Marx's original

concept of "productive labor" and his sense of priorities

in economic life. We also argue that baseball does not generate

profit; it simply partakes in its redivision. At best, when

it is connected to advertising and fame, baseball assists

in the realization of surplus-value. It does not produce

surplus-value.

2. In the course of discussion, MIM's second thesis arose:

especially in view of any internationalist standards whatsoever,

the imperialist country working classes are not exploited.

That means something about the value of their labor-power.

This thesis is somewhat apart from the first thesis which

deals with what line of "work" imperialist country workers

are involved in. Thesis #2 is about appropriating other

people's labor if only in relatively small amounts on a per

capita basis compared with capitalists.

One critic--Doug Henwood--asserted in another forum that thesis #2

is wrong. As we have rebutted him in MT#1, Henwood simply assumed

that which must be proved in this debate, by dividing

GNP expressed in dollar terms by the hours worked

--but only hours worked by Amerikan workers--to prove the

exploitation of Amerikan workers. In such a case if you accept

that the GNP in its totality is the dead labor of just

workers within U.S. borders, of course it's impossible for

a thesis like MIM's to be held simultaneously. However, if

Marx taught anybody anything, it was to keep your eye on the

labor, and its appropriation. Taking GNP and dividing by hours

worked by Amerikan workers is a surrender to the mystification

of exchange-value. GNP figures from the government

will never tell you where the labor going into the GNP was done.

Doug Henwood is not alone in doing this calculation with

reactionary nationalist assumptions. We have seen famous social-

democrats do it, phony Marxists do it and even self-proclaimed

Maoists do it.

MIM typically offers up a few ways of disproving its thesis #2:

a) Show us the profits produced by the exploitation of Amerikan

workers; we contend that they are too small to be accounted for

by anything but the labor of oppressed nations. This has

obvious implications for our socialist program upon

seizing power. "30 for 40" in Amerika is not our first agenda item;

reparations to the oppressed nations is our first agenda item.

b) Show us the property accumulated in capitalist hands. If

Gus Hall or Doug Henwood were correct, we would expect to see

capitalists accumulate over $3 trillion in assets every year,

given an economy of about $5 trillion.

If labor is being wasted, what class is wasting it? Who is

getting those jobs in the Pentagon? Where are the premier

advertising, law, insurance and prison industries located

--in the oppressed countries or the imperialist countries?

Who gets those jobs?

c) Show us the internationalist efforts of the workers here

relative to those in other countries. How do they react to bombing

Libya, attacking Iraq etc. compared with other workers? If

we are correct that the labor aristocracy has swallowed up the

Euro-Amerikan proletariat and it is engaged in redivision of

surplus value instead of struggle to lessen surplus-value, then

attacks on foreign workers will result whenever this class's

demands are mobilized for. We used the example of Daum's comments

on Mexican workers in the Detroit strike as an example.

The CPUSA is also making thinly veiled attacks on foreign workers

in its paper and on this list, hence Scott's comments (without

follow-up) on Indian workers and the CPUSA's misrepresentation of

NAFTA. We believe it should be clear to activists just on a

strategic level that any movement that spontaneously leads to

attacks on foreign workers has no great future.

3) Thesis #3 is about this strategic implication of our line

and should perhaps be considered a corollary. In our view,

a post-Modernist project has corrupted imperialist

country Marxism by substituting

white-collar workers for the proletariat which has an

historic mission to destroy imperialism.

These movements of labor and its appropriation express themselves

in national form. We insist on tracing labor to its location and

eschew any attempt by imperialist country workers to use oppressed

nation workers for their own goals.

We therefore call for a dictatorship of the proletariat where

parasitic "work" is not smuggled into that definition of proletariat. In the case of the United Snakes for instance, that will involve the

joint dictatorship of the oppressed nations over imperialism, because

the imperialist country working classes cannot be the leading agent of the destruction of imperialism: they aren't proletarian.

Pat for MIM